


Beyond the Pale

by Embleer_Frith0323



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, The Road - Cormac McCarthy, Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Bat Family, Batfamily Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Novel, Nuclear Winter, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Nuclear War, Rape, Rape Aftermath, References to Shakespeare, Shakespeare Quotations, Survival, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-05-27 16:57:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 120,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Embleer_Frith0323/pseuds/Embleer_Frith0323
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of a devastating invasion that plunges the earth into a nuclear winter, decimates the Justice League and Young Justice team and leaves their members now feared and persecuted, and sees Vandal Savage and the Light in total power, the remaining members of the League and Young Justice cobble together an underground resistance to reclaim their freedom and free the earth from the grip of Savage's tyranny. In the post-apocalyptic backdrop of the world, Dick Grayson cuts a swath across the wasteland of the wilderness to reunite with his teammates and assist in the rebellion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Then You Shall Hear the Surly Sullen Bell

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! 
> 
> Hope all's well with everyone! ^_^
> 
> This work is, first and foremost, a bit of an exploratory one--I got the idea when I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road and, at about the same time, had a really long discussion with my dad and one of my best pals about "kill supers" versus "non-kill supers" (i.e. superheroes/heroes who kill, as opposed to superheroes/heroes who don't.) I was first interested in placing Justice League or Young Justice members in the world setting of The Road, and seeing what they would make of it, and then, the idea of exploring what might lead to a traditionally non-kill super to cross the line into becoming a kill super (and going beyond kill or be killed, vengeance-seeking, or etc.) started to tag on, as well. Naturally, I picked my favorite golden boy to work with--Nightwing. I feel comfortable with him, and hopefully I've kept him as in character as possible in a scenario like this one. :-)
> 
> TO WARN YOU--there is a lot of ugliness in this fic due to the subject matter and overall intent behind it. As such, TRIGGER WARNINGS ABOUND. 
> 
> STILL--I hope you enjoy it, and that it's not a waste of reading time. ^_^ Thank you for stopping by and happy reading! :D

_No one really knows who they are, or why they came. They are called the Horsemen. They arrived in a deranged mockery of Biblical fashion—the proverbial thieves in the night. In a wash of blood, fire, and death, they came, and were just as quickly gone._

_The Month of the Devil. It was a sustained, pulsing blur of cities vaporized into dust, troops burned to cinders, Leaguers shattered like Matryoshka dolls when they moved to resist. Nuclear weapons detonating in retaliation, dropping the bleak, heather curtain of suspended animation over the thick, stifled earth. And now, none is above the grasping, skeleton claws of this dead world. There is no life. There is no immortality. There are no cheats. The al Ghuls were slaughtered for their Lazarus Pits, their heads tacked on pikes like gruesome pins on a bare, dusty cushion outside the crumbled ruins of their stronghold. Within weeks any users of the pools met the same death at the hands of the Purge, who bombed the pits into steam. This is our punishment, they said. It’s the best we deserve._

*******

Cold.

Always the dank, chattering, bone-penetrating chill.

The sallow, graying noon hangs filmy overhead, the rag of smog stretched like filthy cheesecloth over the muddled sun. Even curled against Wolf, I shiver in tectonic quakes that set my teeth to mimicking the quick-fire din of applause. The boy fares little better, balled up quivering into the concavity of my abdomen like a tartan-wrapped pill bug. I draw in a stifled breath through the scarf tied over my mouth and nostrils. There are two scarves, one for each of us, both enchanted against what soot there still is in the air.

There’s a seeking in my abdominals, a sense of roving and shifting. Empty and clawing and weak, sending the accustomed wobbliness through my limbs. I’ve been dizzy with fatigue and undernourishment for weeks now. Today will be hard going if we don’t find food. It will be hard going until then, too. 

Exhausted to the marrow, part of me wants to return to sleep (and dreams), but I’m not quite ready to quit life yet, however poor a pass I might make at it these days. 

“Come on,” I murmur, waking the boy. “It’s time to pack up.”

He shivers. “I’m really tired, Dad.”

“I know.”

“And I’m cold.”

“I know. But if we stay here, we’ll only stay cold. At least moving around we’ll be warmer.”

“Five more minutes?”

“…Okay. Five more minutes.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.”

I lay a hand on his head, working my fingers in the messy, heavy tufts of thick, jet black hair that he’s inherited from both parents. If not for the continued, brackish rain that’s given it a good drenching since last night, it would be unspeakably scuzzy. He needs a haircut. I’m not good at those.

“I think I’m ready to get up now,” he says, by and by. 

“All right,” I say, and try to will my aching muscles into motion. Wolf rises, stretches, and then sits next to the boy.

“Are we going to walk all day again?” he asks.

“Probably. Sorry.”

“…It’s okay.”

“We’ll be there soon. Promise.”

“Where your friends are?”

“Yep, that’s right.”

“Dad, how many friends do you have?”

“I used to have a lot,” I say. “Come on, let’s get up.”

Getting a fire going in the rain is a pain in my ass. I have to wrangle the tarp into submission, no easy feat in the determined wind, until eventually, I launch full-scale war on it. By the time I’ve finally gotten a small flame sparked in the small, portable stove we carry, I’m cursing a blue streak and overtly grumpy. The boy, unfazed, hatches some doodles in the mud with a stick. One night, we had thrown his sketchbook into the fire, one sheet at a time, to keep it burning. I had to fight tears, watching his drawings torched. 

I sift through the regrettably lightweight knapsack, assessing what little food stores we have left. I feel like a total heel every time I see the fruit—I pinched those goods from one of the Light’s greenhouses. I try to remind myself of Bart’s words regarding scavenger rights. Finder’s keepers and all that. When we came across the conservatory, I was still good for another day or two, but the kid was in bad shape, and needed to eat as in yesterday. Desperate, I left my son with Wolf, and broke in to raid that place like a lion on a field day in a sheep pen. I didn’t feel all that bad, not at first, when I saw the look on my son’s face as I showed him the plunder, and watched him as he happily plowed through the armfuls of fruit I brought out for him. But the guilt assaulted me later, _really_ hard, enough that I even dwelled on returning the remainder of the booty to the greenhouse. I knew we were past that point, though, and at least my son slept more deeply and comfortably that night. I haven’t touched a fragment of the fruit since. 

A can of tuna, a cup of instant noodles, a container of pork and beans, and the remaining fruit is all we have left. We ran out of bottled water. I gnaw my lip, which is already chapped and chewed to shreds. We’ll need food, but we don’t have any credits left, and panhandling unsuspecting strangers leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. However, there’s just no promise of well-gotten gain these days; at least, not for Sams. 

Shortened from “Samaritans.” It’s what heroes are called now. It’s not a good thing. 

“Acid rain instant noodles,” I mutter. “I do not like them, Sam I am. I am Sam, Sam I am, Sam on the lam, I am, I am…”

I crack up, and then think I might finally be losing it as I run rainwater into a cup through a filtering cloth. It’s a slow, tedious, boring process, but after a time, we have a full cup of reasonably clean water. I remove the cloth and inspect the damage. Almost completely gray, black in places. I expel a breath. The boy has sat, resting his back against Wolf’s form, watching this whole while.

“So we definitely can’t drink the rain water without using the cloths,” he states. 

“Yep, that’s right,” I tell him, setting the water in a pan over the fire. I hand him an apple, then grab another cloth and set to filtering more rain as the cup heats. “You know, we couldn’t do even this a few years ago. Levels of contaminants were way too high to be safe even after running the water through a filter. We’d have to sit here and boil it.”

He pulls the scarf from his face. “And then we’d really be in for it because we can’t stay in one place for too long.”

“Yeah. And then before those contaminants, things were pretty radioactive still.” 

The boy makes a slashing motion across his throat. “Yep, and if we drank that, it’d be curtains.”

“That’s right,” I mutter absently. 

“That’s why the water rations were so low for such a long time, even with it constantly raining and snowing and stuff.”

I smile at him. “You’re a smart cookie, you know that?”

He looks up at me, and startlingly resembles his mother in the pallid light. “Did I get that from you?”

I shrug. “Maybe. Your mom was smart, too.”

“ _Am_ I like Mom?”

“Dead ringer.”

“I thought everyone said I looked like you.”

“Well,” I tell him, “you do, but…”

I don’t want to talk about this anymore. However, he looks at me expectantly.

“But what?” he prompts. 

“I see pieces of her in you all the time,” I say, as lightly as I can.

He smiles. 

Yep. Dead ringer. 

“I miss her,” he states, pressing at the mud under his foot with his shoe.

I’m silent a moment, and then say, “Yeah. Me, too, kiddo.”

The water is boiling. I prepare the instant noodles, oddly reminded of college. I hand the cup to the boy. He spoons some into his mouth, and gives a few handfuls to Wolf. After a few minutes of eating, he extends the noodles to me.

“Here, Dad,” he says. “You should probably have some, too.”

I shake my head. “I’ll pick off whatever you don’t finish.”

He ponders the noodles, and then holds the cup back out. “No, go ahead.”

He’s right that I shouldn’t go without. I eat, and try to remember to pace myself. I don’t want to finish what’s left in the cup without letting my son have the rest, but he and Wolf have polished off about three-quarters of its contents, and if I don’t at least make some effort to keep my own strength up, I’ll run every risk of going the same route as his mother, and he’ll be left only with Wolf in this hostile place. Smart kid or no, that thought rots my gut. 

We wrap up, and I tell the boy to put his scarf back on. Even with the significantly lower levels of ash, soot, and other pollutants in the air now, it’s best to err on the side of caution. I draw my own scarf up over my nose, pack up our meager belongings, and we set out, heading west. 

*******

_Savage enjoyed a meteoric rise to power, only we’re still waiting for the equally meteoric fall that should follow._

_Captain Atom absorbed such a vast quantity of fallout from the nuclear retaliation that he disappeared. Just transmutated into oxygen. Presumably to an unfathomably distant future, but there’s no way to really tell._

_The Light laid claim to that act of tremendous altruism. Their assertions falsely backed by fallacious documents and evidence. They were championed as Earth’s greatest heroes in the wake of the Justice League’s failure to protect the earth from the Horsemen, a flop that forced leaders the world over to turn to their nuclear arsenals and lay waste to the planet in a sweeping of fire and ash. Previous indiscretions of the Light, all apparently forgotten. All swept under the rug without a speck remaining when Savage implicated that the otherworldly visitation was a response to some botched League mission, elsewhere in the universe, long since disremembered._

_Unrest. Disputes. Skirmishes. Finally, war._

_The League, its ranks sparse and resources depleted, unable to do much more than subsist beneath the onslaught of attacks. Militaries ill-equipped to do battle with the Light, decimated and shamed. Countless more in cahoots with our enemies. Our sympathizers and allies outnumbered, overpowered, and finally, defeated._

_The US president was targeted and assassinated as a League supporter in short order thereafter. Savage seized the States before a thundering ovation. He was a savior, they said. Barbara and I sat in our apartment in Bludhaven, where we watched the broadcast of what would cost us our last shreds of real freedom on television. Her face was white in the pale glow of the television, her chest unmoving with her detained breath._

_Within days, the words we feared._

_“All members of the Justice League, and its cooperative, Young Justice, including sympathizers of these terrorist cells, are to be handed over to the appropriate authorities with immediacy and extreme prejudice. Any assistance provided to known members and supporters will be regarded as an act of terrorism. All symbols, paraphernalia, terms, and names concomitant with any Justice League or Young Justice affiliates will be received as highly suspicious and subject to investigation. Failure to comply with these regulations will result in punishment to the fullest extent of the law.”_

_Of course, telling a Leaguer not to suit up is like telling a shark not to swim._

*******

So weird, I think to myself, as I help my son navigate a rushing, black-water river on slick, silty rocks in the rapidly fading daylight. I never saw myself as a father, biological, adoptive or otherwise. A big brother, sure, but father, no. And yet, here I am, and here I’ve been. 

Traversing the stream in the water, using it to etch our passage, is slow going and cold, but necessary. Marauders are preceded by genetically enhanced, flesh-eating hounds. It’s thanks to countless lucky stars that their enhancements haven’t enabled them to pick up scents in running water. It’s a profoundly risky business. The rocks are randomly dispersed across the river, with plenty of deep, quick-flowing water between. The temperature is only dropping—the rain is steadily evolving into sleet. Bits of ice travel over the surface of the water. My hands are numb, the fingers tingling painfully and burning at the tips. My hair keeps trailing into my eyes. I’m shaking almost to the point of convulsing. I think it would be nice to feel my phalanges again. I can’t remember the last time we slept in a house.

“Dad, check it out!” the boy calls, apparently impervious to the crap-ass weather, leaping blithely to the next stone. His balance is good, his arms outstretched and steady, his posture straight and confident. If things change, he’ll likely surpass me as an acrobat. “Dad, watch!”

“I am. You’re doing great, kiddo,” I tell him, smiling. 

Wolf is a skilled acrobat himself, hopping securely from one rock to the next. His legs and undercoat are sopping, but his shoulders and back are only dampened from the rain. Occasionally, he shakes out his coat.

It’s a good ways from the shore, and too far from the next potential stepping stone, when I get a perch on the last viable rock. I try not to swear, even though it’s not like it’s anything the boy hasn’t heard. The part of travelling in water, the part I’ve dreaded, has come.

The general idea is to make the Marauders believe that we tried to cross the stream via the outcroppings of rock, then got sucked into the current to drown, or that we crossed the river downstream. Either way, we have to end up a good ways down in order for either one of those to be a plausible ruse, and tonight we’ll set up camp without having actually crossed the water. 

I’ll have to wade with the kid on my shoulders. We’re already wet and cold, but not soaked through, thanks to some of the garb we have on. I’d rather none of us goes hypothermic today, but given the sleet and floating bits of ice, it looks like that’s not in the cards. We’ll also probably have to camp earlier than I’d like. 

Damn.

“Well,” I say. “Time to take a bath. You okay with riding on my shoulders?”

“You’re really getting in the water? You’ll catch your death of cold,” he says.

I turn, and give him a smile. “Like I said. Pieces of your mom all the time.”

“…Will you be okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be good. It’s not like Popsicles have feelings or anything.”

He looks quizzically at me.

“Just means I’ll be cold,” I explain, recalling that he’s never had or even heard of Popsicles. “But it’ll be fine, we’ll just have to find a good, dry-ish place to hunker down for the night so I can defrost.”

He makes a face. “You’re so weird, Dad.”

“Well, that’s a trait you’ve inherited, along with my devilish good looks and charm. Come on, better get moving.”

I wait for him to jump to the rock I’m standing on, and Wolf hops to the stone he just leapt from. There’s just enough room for me to kneel down, and the boy climbs atop my shoulders. There’s no easing into water this cold, so I just plunge in up to my neck. The shock yanks the breath right out of me and about fences every motion for a spell, although the violent current breaks this brief halt. Wolf lowers himself into the river, and vigorously starts paddling. I can’t seem to get my lungs working as I laboriously make my way downstream, every movement pulling strength I don’t have from my limbs. By the time I hit the first footfall that doesn’t flirt with dragging my head, and my son, under the water, I’m past the point of shaking—not good. My fingers, aside from the prickly numbness born of the chill, have fallen asleep, along with the entirety of my left arm and the right fore. My heart sputters in my chest, then slows to a sporadic thumping, then sputters again. 

When we finally break off from the current to reach the shore, it’s all I can do to keep focused on the task at hand. My brain has gone stupid, along with my digits, and I stare unseeing at the blackened sand for a second as my thoughts try to catch up with our surroundings. I tilt forward, unable to keep fully upright. Thankfully, my son is on top of things, drawing me into the thicket of evergreens maybe a hundred feet from the shore, Wolf following close. 

“Dad? Dad, you okay?” he asks, plunking me onto my butt under the sparse conifers. 

I don’t really have the wherewithal to answer, just to resist the drowsy cold that threatens to draw me into the hinterland of sleep, a dimension I might not return from. I’m dimly aware of the boy speaking, but I’m having a hard time picking up on what he says. I sluggishly realize he’s dragging my soaked clothes off, then wrapping me in a tolerably dry blanket, and then setting up the tarp. I watch with intense concentration, keeping myself in the here and now, as Wolf shakes out his fur, then rubs up against the tree trunks, drying his soaked, heavy coat.

My son gets a bit of spit going by speaking some words and lighting one of our precious starter logs (regrettable, but admittedly necessary right now), then coaxes my immobile arms from their locked positions to nudge my tingling hands into my armpits. Things I’ve done for him throughout these weeks in the wild, copied now. Through the shrinkwrap that the cold has stretched around my brain, I feel a detached, sick sliver of guilt that my ten-year-old has been forced into playing caretaker. 

“Dad, come on,” he says, urging me to move toward the small, orange flames that crackle and flicker in the wet, frigid air. “Get closer to the fire.” 

I acquiesce, and notice that he’s shuffled out of his damp threads, and has burrowed up beneath the blanket, his arms wrapped around me like the belts of a lifejacket. Wolf, now reasonably shaken out, trots over and curls his vast, furry body around us both. After some moments spent like this, I start to quiver again, then chatter, and then feel that I can at last cajole my arms into returning my son’s embrace. Finally, much warmer, I reach up and squeeze a handful of his damp hair. 

“Thanks, kiddo,” I mumble. 

“You know, Dad—you promised you wouldn’t scare me like that,” he tells me. There’s levity in his voice, but it doesn’t fully mask the little eddies of fear that churn beneath. 

“I know,” I mutter. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He draws back a little. “Umm… can we eat? Did you want to?”

I shake my head. “You go ahead.”

I regret that we won’t be finding food, and that we’re officially down to the barest stores, but the wade through the icy stream has left me bone-tired and too weak to move much beyond reclining and shivering. Against Wolf’s haunches, I feel intoxicated lying in the heat from his body, and from the fire.

“Can I have the tuna?” asks the boy, rifling through the pack.

I nod. “You should have some of the fruit, too.”

“We won’t have much left, though…”

“It’s okay. We’ll turn something up tomorrow.” 

“Okay.”

“Get a dry shirt on and make sure you brush your teeth.”

“I will.”

“With toothpaste. I’m serious.”

“I know, I know.”

I drop off before he’s even ventured out from under the blanket. 

When I wake for a moment, I register that his warm, small body is pressed against my chilled, tired one, and I encircle him with both arms. I rest my face against his hair, now dry, as the rain dribbles against the tarp overhead. Wolf sleeps to our backs, his side rising and falling in a lullaby-like rhythm. Everything I have in this world is under this tarp. The lowering fire still burns, fueled by the starter log and, to my regret, one of the boy’s books resting atop, burning slowly through the hardbound cover. One of us should keep watch, but it’s too cold and miserable even for Marauders to put in more than a few sniffs to find us. Bad weather, for all its dangers, at least renders one moot. Secure for now, I’m asleep again in seconds. 

*******

_Sams, they call us. “Good” Samaritans. Bad people who have hidden behind their good deeds. The sparks of anger and fear fanned into flames that dwarfed the firestorms that ravaged the globe._

_There might have been a time that posters of us hung in the bedrooms and lockers of teenyboppers and fans, that people stopped to have photos taken with us, or to request our autographs after pleading with us to share with them a few anecdotes. That time folded rapidly beneath the advent of the hot, bloody mistrust of our kind, until it was forgotten completely. As though it never even existed, outside of emphasizing our growing universal letdowns._

_And then, the Marauders appeared. Groups of twisted brigands with a particularly fiery hatred, handpicked and fueled by commendation from Savage himself. They prowl the planet even now, their enhanced hounds as big as small horses and the breathing illustration of every childhood horror questing for the tiniest traces of us left behind, penning us in hiding like rodents and reducing us to only the smallest and most secretive efforts to fight back in the wake of all of our blood they’ve shed._

_Divide and conquer._

_So far, it’s a winning strategy._


	2. That I in Your Sweet Thoughts Would Be Forgot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew... got it edited before I leave for mini-break...  
> ENJOY!! ^_^

_So much hatred. So much bloodlust. It was insatiable. Superman, attempting diplomacy, fooled and shot with a Kryptonite bullet, exposed to more Kryptonite, movements that wasted him into a sobbing creature completely defenseless in its pain. Wonder Woman overcome, bound, tortured beside him. Parts of this captured on live television, the discomfited news anchors looking on in mute horror._

_Not a soul moved to assist them._

_Then, they were dragged off, Superman not to be seen again._

_*******_

I remember it. That night. All that happened. Everything that followed. It might as well have gone down five minutes ago.

Still. I suppose that, in their way, the horrific events led to the birth of my son. You know what they say about clouds and silver linings. 

Roy and I, incarcerated and watching that terrible television broadcast from where we were held chained to a wall by the use of some strange computerized bindings, doubled our efforts to break free of our bonds. It was our captors’ way of torturing us to leave us with the broadcast running in plain view. 

Our squad had been caught when the Light’s goons intercepted us on our own mission to free Diana and Clark. Their intricate knowledge of our plan of attack pointed to a betrayal from one of our own. We had no idea what happened to the rest of our squad, and equally, it wasn’t looking good for our original quarry. To rescue our allies was first. But then, to find the right hand of the devil. Our ties held fast, until Roy and I both were soaked in the sweat of the effort spent straining against them. No amount of escape artistry presented any shade of real use. 

When I figured the crowd would enjoy our livers with some farva beans and a nice Chianti, Barbara, M’gann, and Conner, all in civvies, along with Wolf, dared the odds to battle for our freedom. 

“I think I speak for both of us,” I stated as Barbara, with remarkable efficiency, shut down the systems that held us locked in place, “when I say I’ve never been so happy to see your faces.”

My shackles were no sooner broken than the sound of a clap reverberated throughout the room, and Conner’s head was morphed into a burst of viscera in a blaze of sickly green, a pink-and-bile mist left in its wake. A second clap, and Roy’s neck snapped to the side, a vivid splash of red painting the stone wall beyond him. Neither Barbara, Wolf, nor I had even had the time to take a breath and utter a sound when a hurled incendiary hit the ground and burst next to M’gann. With a wail, she went up like a torch to burn to a crisp in under a minute’s time. It all happened before I’d even registered that I was free to move. I never saw the assailants. I stood, stricken stupid for the barest second, covered in my friend’s blood, brains, and skull fragments, then rushed uselessly to try to help M’gann as she screamed and thrashed and burned. 

Whoever attacked them—knew who they were. Their weaknesses. 

A bullet sliced my ear into ribbons of deaf, bleeding flesh, swiftly followed by another round that struck my arm. I spun and upended over a pile of computer parts and discarded tech into a hallway. Stumbling dazed to my feet, I sought, but couldn’t see Barbara. A final round snapped my calf right out from underneath me and brought me jarringly to the slick floor. The world swirled down a guttering, black drain as the astounding reports of more gunfire rang out and decimated the hearing in my remaining ear. 

Failed deus ex machina.

An indeterminate darkness followed, intermittently broken up by lurid dreams and voices echoing weirdly in and out of my skull. I awoke with a start in well-known surroundings—the med-lab in the Bat Cave. I tried to sit up, but lost hold of my breath, and went prone with a muted thump. The pain was transporting—I’m convinced I astralprojected to cope with it. 

“Ah, Master Richard, back from the dead,” spoke a blessedly familiar voice a few minutes of suffering later, “looks like we’re running a bit low on our Demerol dosage… Open up, there’s a good lad.”

“What happened,” I murmured hoarsely, once I had swallowed the tablet Alfred gave me. A cannula was pressed into my nostrils, and upon investigating, I spied a long, thick tube that wound out of the side of my bare chest. “How… How did I get here?”

“Well, a very large, furry companion of yours—Wolf, I believe, Master Bruce, Master Tim…” said Alfred, his voice muffled, wavering through a cotton tube. I turned my head toward him, straining to hear him. “And an old friend. Master Jason.”

“…Barbara?”

Alfred was silent, his lips drawn into a thin line. 

I shook my head as my heart fell out of my chest through my back. “Alfred…?”

“I am sorry, Master Richard.”

I turned my face away, and didn’t even bother trying to stem the tears. Alfred sat down on the edge of the bed, and rested a hand on my hair. 

“For what it’s worth,” said Alfred, “Master Bruce and the Commissioner did everything they could.”

I just cried until I mercifully lost consciousness. 

I was in and out for a while after that. I don’t remember a whole lot, just that I nightmared incessantly until the livid dreams roiled into horrible phantasmagorias, seemingly tangible visions of terror and evil, remembered and illusory. I have wavering recollections of startling myself out of the strange, undulating not-sleep as I cried for my mother in my delirium. I think at another point I struck Bruce with a blow to the face, confusing him for some nasty hellspawn that had come to cart me off to the netherworld. 

I came to after an interim of darkness, with a dryness in my mouth and a burning in my throat. I was chilled and nauseous. My head felt weighted and stony, with a dogged throbbing in my temples. The pain overall, however, seemed a bit less, my vision a little clearer. The room was dark, save for the light from the monitors. I drew in a breath, released it. One ear felt congested, like it was stuffed with down. It stung and burned, and persistently rang with a metallic thrum. I don’t think I could have heard an atom bomb go off through it. My other ear seemed okay, picking up on the sounds of the room tolerably well. I was still on oxygen, but the chest tube was gone. My right arm was in a sling.

“Welcome back.”

I looked over in the direction of the voice that I knew very well, and didn’t need two ears to recognize. Bruce stood beside me. 

“You scared the hell out of us, by the way,” he told me. 

I looked questioningly at him as he laid a hand on my forehead, then, removing it, nodded as though satisfied.

“You had a serious fever for a couple of days,” he explained. “Lymphangitis from one of the gunshot wounds. We’d left the bullet in your chest because we didn’t want to risk any structural damage withdrawing it. We had to wait until Cross could get here to perform surgery, and given the fact that Zeta Tubes are offline, you were in a pretty bad way by the time he arrived.”

“Did he take it out?”

Bruce nodded. “It was ugly. But I guess it was successful enough, and frankly, you’re alive. So… we probably shouldn’t complain. We’ll have to check the range of motion in your arm when you’ve recovered a bit more—the bullet passed through your deltoid and lodged in the tissue near your lung. There was some damage to your ribs and your humerus was partially dissolved. So at this point, you’re rebuilt in a few places with metal plates.”

“Jeez,” I muttered. “Pretty sure this wasn’t what I had in mind when I said I wanted to be Wolverine when I grew up.”

“Well, luckily, that was the worst of it. The shot you took to the leg was a perforating hit and the bullet didn’t tumble, so it wasn’t as damaging as it could have been, even though it really made a mess of your fibula on its way through. Speaking of more metal plates. You’ll have to wear that cast for a while.”

I looked down, and finally noticed that I did, in fact, wear a plaster cast on my elevated left leg. 

“There wasn’t a whole lot we could do for your ear,” Bruce continued. “I’m sorry. Alfred and Pieter said you’ll likely recover at least _some_ of the hearing in it over time—but it’s slashed to hell. Not much in the way of a solution outside of some serious plastic surgery, which we really can’t do for you just now.” 

I reached up, and grimaced when I felt at the ruination of my ear. 

“But…” Bruce continued, “I guess you can always just wear your hair long. Not that much of a stretch for you, anyway.”

I gave him a half-smile, which faded. The reality that hovered over me, clamoring to be acknowledged, was steadily making its descent into my senses. 

“Dick,” he said, noticing my expression, and sobering. “I’m sorry about Barbara. But I swear to you. I did try.”

I looked up at him, and shook my head. “I know you did, Bruce.”

A pause.

“…M-M’gann?” I asked. “Did she… Did she survive?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Am I the only one…?”

“No, you aren’t. Wolf survived. So did Tim and Jason.”

“They’re okay?”

He nodded. “As for the rest… Raquel and her family have provided a sanctuary for Leaguers and members of Young Justice. Garfield, Bart, and Jaime are with them. Diana was rescued by the Amazons, and is safe in Themyscira, although their doors are closed to refugees. As for Kaldur and Artemis, they escaped their incarceration, and are with Virgil at his parents’ home. None of them is seriously injured.”

So the rest of my squad was all right. “Anyone else confirmed dead?”

“…No. But Superman, Wonder Girl, Lagoon Boy, and Aquaman are missing. Tim is en route to Dakota City to join with Kaldur in seeking the whereabouts of the missing Atlantians and Cassie. Icon is working to find Superman.”

“Any word on who sold us out?”

“Gardner. I don’t think anyone was overly surprised. We made some efforts at pursuit, but... he traded green for red and disappeared. No word on his present whereabouts.”

I said nothing.

The silence continued for a moment, and then Bruce heaved a sigh. “Well. I’ll let you rest.”

I awoke again sometime later, uncertain of the hour. More nightmares. I lay sweating, terrified in the darkness scarcely dispelled by the feeble glow of the equipment. I pulled the cannula from my nostrils, and forced myself to sit up. Despite the fact that my body rioted against every motion and the obstructive cast on my leg presented a substantial mobility issue, I made my arduous way out of bed, hopped around until I found a set of crutches, nabbed one of them, and hobbled into the manor. I couldn’t use both, seeing as how one arm was all bound up and out of service. 

Leaning on the crutch hurt the hell out of my uninjured shoulder, which seemed weird, since it was the opposite arm that was hurt. Movement, as such, was laborious and agonizingly slow. I got pretty pissy about that in short order. 

I had no idea if anyone else had sought shelter here. I doubted Jason had stayed. I wasn’t even sure how this place was still safe. But I was on edge, and pretty well spent on the neverending cavalcade of horrors that relentlessly marched across my vision both in sleeping and in waking. Walking through the manor was at least something of a change of scenery, even if nothing turned up in the way of company.

The vast mansion was drafty and dim—the rationed energy that had just been instated at that time didn’t permit for extravagancies, particularly in a place that large. I had vaguely set out with the harmless intention of poking around the library, but I started to think that perhaps the idea was slightly ill advised. I was huffing and sweating and in terrible pain before I was barely down the first hallway. I leaned against the wall, and attempted to catch my breath. 

I was about to make the somewhat better-informed decision to head back to the med-lab to pass out for a week or so when my good ear caught the sound of soft, familiar footfalls.

“Wolf,” I said. “Holy shit.”

He trotted in my direction, his heavy, snowy fur bouncing on his enormous haunches. I leaned forward the best I could, bracing my weight on my unhurt leg, and caught him around his big, hairy shoulders as he came up to greet me. His chimney sweep tail fanned back and forth. 

“Kind of surprised you’re so happy to see me, old pal,” I said. “All things considered.”

He gazed up at me with his calm eyes, not a trace of blame or reproach in his intelligent face. I ran a hand over his head.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, and rested my cheek in the space between his triangular ears. I heaved a sigh, knowing that there was no truly saying sorry for something like this, and opted for silence instead of repeating myself.

It was bizarre, seeing him without Conner stuck to his side. A flash of my friend’s face unfurled inside my mind’s eye, and before I could pull the curtains on it, I, again, witnessed the awful image of that same face blasted into mist. I closed my eyes, scrunching them shut. I never saw what happened to Wally, although my imagination did a fair job of envisaging the horrible, tragic scene for me. I didn't even really _see_ what happened to Tula; at least, not up close, not in stark detail. I didn't know with any real certainty what had happened to Barbara, and in all truth, a large part of me rebelled against the idea of knowing, acknowledging that maybe, in some way, I was, for the first time, thankful to Bruce for his reticence. But... Conner. M'gann. Roy. I had _seen_ them. I shuddered with a violence that wracked my spine. Christ. _My friends._ Bile pulsed at my throat, cruel snapshots of so many losses, some attended, some conjured in brutal detail by my pitiless anamnesis, all of them horrific, blinking in and out of my line of sight. I didn’t want any more flash images. I dug a hand into my forehead, then looked at Wolf.

“Okay, then,” I told him, forcing myself to smile through my pounding heart. “Time to get whelmed… You up for a walk?”

He wagged his tail more forcefully, and I nodded. 

“All right,” I said. “Just give me a couple of hours to get moving.”

We made our tedious way down the hall, and then down two flights of stairs, hindered by my need to continually pause and rest. Wolf was patient, as I’d come to learn about him over the years. I liked animals very well, having grown up around them in the circus. Bruce kept a dog he named Ace, a behemoth German shepherd with a head the size of a basketball, that was still maybe a third Wolf’s size. The circus animals aside, Ace was the only pet I ever had, and even then, he predominantly belonged to Bruce, since he did the majority of the training. I was the last person I’d ever have expected to inherit Wolf. 

Coming to the landing, I fell on my butt atop the bottommost steps. Wolf lowered himself to have a seat next to me. We sat there a while, as I caught my breath. Sweat that steamed in the biting chill dribbled down my skin. I wondered if I needed to be concerned about the fact that I was shivering, in spite of the steaming sweat.

When I was about to stand up, I heard voices, even through my partial deafness. I perked up, interested.

They were coming from the parlor, and I rose to my feet to make my protracted way across the foyer with renewed determination. 

“…Can’t be too careful, sir.” Alfred’s voice.

“Agreed. We might want to strip-search him. Make sure he’s not wired.” Bruce’s.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I paused at that, almost a hundred and four percent sure that this last was Lex Luthor’s. “I come here in good faith, offering you not only the deal of a lifetime, but a deal that will safeguard your interests—”

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, Lex. You’ve already self-aggrandized, no need to go on beating a dead horse, here.” Jason’s voice. So he _had_ stayed. “What I’m concerned about, you see, is that you haven’t even bothered to provide us some details about this deal. Or, hell, even just the basic gist of it. Sorry, but ‘safeguarding our interests’ and ‘deal of a lifetime’ aren’t enough to so much as pique my interest, let alone get me listening. I mean, everything you say kind of translates to ‘I’m Lex Luthor and I’m a scumbag,’ at least in _my_ mind. Capisce?”

“If I am a scumbag, _Red Hood_ , then you are a completely irredeemable degenerate,” Luthor returned evenly.

“Takes one to know one. So I’ll tell you this—from one scumbag to another. We _just_ can’t be sure you’re not wearing a wire.” There was a disquieting clicking sound. “Like you yourself said, times are tough. And like Alfred said, can’t be too careful. And as we all know, you’re with the Light.” There was a moment of baited quiet, and I wondered if I should enter and put my two cents in. I stayed where I was. “Better let us frisk you, then, I guess, right? I mean… You’d do the same, in our position.”

“All right, then,” said Luthor. “Since you apparently can’t take my word for it, frisk me, if it satisfies you, although I assure you that you will find nothing.”

Some unidentified sounds came from the parlor.

“…Oh, for God’s sake,” muttered Luthor a few moments later. “There _is_ a lady present.”

“Who, you seem to think, has never seen a man frisked before, or done her own share of frisking, Luthor.” I instantly recognized that voice, and smiled. Zatanna.

Some more moments passed.

“Clean,” Bruce announced.

“Well, then,” said Lex, “now that we I know I am _not_ wired, just as I said—”

“One more thing,” Zatanna cut him off. _“Yrcs.”_

There was a moment of silence.

“He’s also clean of any magical piggybacking,” she determined. 

I inched closer to the parlor, Wolf at my side.

“ _Good_ , then,” Lex said, his voice finally becoming terse. “As I was about to say—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” I wheezed, limping into the parlor. “But I want to hear this.”

“Master Richard, if you could find it in your heart to cease and desist stopping mine, I would be most obliged,” Alfred snapped, moving to come up beside me.

“Sorry,” I puffed, feeling dizzy. Wolf braced himself against my side, and Alfred took my arm.

“Dick, you shouldn’t even be sitting up,” Bruce berated me from where he stood. “You’re damn far off from healing and you’re still running a fever. Not to mention—”

“I feel fine,” I insisted, a lot more crossly than I intended. “I’m standing, aren’t I?”

“Alfred,” said Bruce, his voice a low, level growl, “take him back to bed, and make sure he stays there.”

“Very well, then, sir,” said Alfred. “Come now, Master Dick, there’s a good lad.”

I was _not_ a good lad, and stood fast, wobbling on the crutch. “No. Like I said, I want to hear this.”

I saw that Zatanna was gazing at me with concern, although her expression wore some confusion, as well. Jason was making a face that wavered somewhere between amusement and embarrassment. 

“Dick,” he said. “…Have you noticed that you’re only wearing your underwear?”

I looked down, and saw that I was only wearing a pair of dark red briefs. Whoops. My head throbbed, and the lights in the room seemed to ebb and dazzle with each pulse. I had completely missed that I wasn’t wearing any pants. 

“I’m still listening,” I said stubbornly, and fell into the nearest seat with a thump. The crutch clattered spectacularly to the floor. Wolf watched it fall, looked over at me, and then sat, his eyes trained on my face. One ear lowered slightly.

Bruce glared at me. “Dick, go back to the lab. Now. You need to rest. Go.”

“No.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Wayne,” Lex said irritably, “I lack the time necessary to stand here while you argue with your clearly incapacitated ward. If we could please get to the business at hand.”

“Fine,” Bruce said, and if looks could kill, I wouldn’t be here right now. “What’s this deal you’ve come to propose?”

“Well, let me ask you something, Mr. Wayne—Batman,” said Lex. “How is it that you think you’ve been safe for all this time from the Marauders and my associates?”

“I should imagine it’s the contingency presented by the tools Wayne Tech will have produced by this time next year to clean the ash out of the stratosphere in a markedly faster time frame,” Bruce replied. “And they need me to supply the tech, given that it’s my design and my company. The opportunity to have me targeted with the most convenience simply hasn’t presented itself.” 

“Hardly,” said Lex. “Why not kill you and just take the tech? Or take over the company?”

“I have failsafes in place should they try it,” said Bruce without so much as blinking. “And they will. Give it time.”

“Of course they will,” Lex said, his tone sticky with condescension. Bruce remained unperturbed. “But… Why not yet?”

Bruce’s face was impassive. “What are you trying to say, Lex? That you had a hand in their immobility? That you’ve been protecting my interests from the Light?”

“Yes,” said Lex. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, as unbelievable as it might be.”

“Not unbelievable,” said Bruce, pointedly lifting the “World’s Greatest Detective” mug he owned and sipping from it. I found this to be hysterically funny and giggled myself to tears. My peals of laughter delayed any further attempts at conversation for a while. 

Looking back, I really should have stayed in bed. 

I got it together and wiped my watering eyes. “My bad. Continue.” 

Bruce didn’t bother glancing in my direction, just worked his jaw and kept his attention on Luthor. “I had already deduced as much,” he said. “I understand also that you’ve kept an active eye on the progress of the scrubbers intended to be merged with weather-seeding tools to encourage accelerated soot removal. I assume you’re interested in procuring them for the Light.”

“Not for the Light,” Luthor explained. “For you.”

Bruce frowned. “Explain.”

“Savage is as interested as any in removing the ash from the stratosphere, a task which he has bestowed on me to accomplish,” said Luthor. “However, even pressed, my own engineers have not been able to catch up to your progress.” He paused. “You understand how this might be problematic. As such, it would benefit me to… _purchase_ Wayne Enterprises, along with its subsidiaries, in a conglomerate with Lex-Corp.”

Bruce chuckled mirthlessly. “No.”

“I figured you would refuse until all of the cards were on the table, and I have some arguably good ones to play,” Lex said, rubbing his hands together. “In return for accepting my offer, you will continue to have total protection from all of the following—Marauders, enforcers, members of the Light, the League of Assassins, which, I’m sure you’re interested in knowing, is still around, this new Purge organization should they prove threatening, and even civilian anti-Sam groups. You will be given access to larger rations in all areas—energy, water, supplies, and food, and your company will be under complete safeguarding by Lex-Corp. You will receive twenty percent of all revenue generated by Wayne Enterprises. I feel that this is more than fair.”

I was about to cry bullshit, when Jason did it for me.

“That’s horseshit,” he snapped.

Close enough.

“I assure you,” said Lex, “it’s not.”

“I’m sorry, but cui bono—who benefits?” Zatanna asked. “You’re offering Bruce protection that he can’t trust in return for saving your own skin from Savage. I’m failing to comprehend how that’s supposed to be the deal of a lifetime. Not to mention the minor fact that you’ll be pilfering eighty percent of the profits from his company.”

“Which, I will gladly point out, isn’t so profitable anymore, Miss Zatara,” Lex said. 

“All the more reason for him not to take such a drastic pay cut,” I interjected. “Especially just to save your pitiful ass.”

“Even delirious, he’s right, you know. As my younger countrymen are fond of saying, you’re takin’ the piss, mate,” Alfred said. 

“I promise you that I am not,” Lex insisted. “As we know, the enforcers and streets—and in particular the Marauders—are not kind to Sams.”

“The streets are kinder to us than you think,” Bruce said, with a loaded, false smile. 

“They won’t be once I opt to lift protection,” Lex said. “When the Marauders and enforcers come down harder on this area, the fear will grow. And the good people of this city won’t hesitate or bat an eye at turning any of you in.”

“You’re trying to say that with your protection, the Marauders won’t canvas this area?” asked Jason.

“…Not quite. Although I’d like to, I can’t keep Savage from sending Marauders to seek former Leaguers, their Young Justice affiliates, and sympathizers here. Only those that reside with you in this manor will be protected. I apologize that I cannot offer you more.”

“And the only stipulation is that Master Bruce allows you to buy out his company to spare you from Savage?” asked Alfred. “Why not just ask to buy the tech itself?”

Lex assumed a look of eternal patience. “If I do not buy the entirety of the company, I cannot promise that the fate of ‘Master Bruce’s’ employees at Wayne Enterprises—the only people _competent_ in this endeavor—will be merciful at the hands of Savage when he decides to take the technology by force. And then, have me killed for failing him.” He looked hard at Bruce. “So you see, Mr. Wayne, it’s not just the people in this room who are threatened and who stand to benefit from this deal. It’s those innocent civilians working for you, building your scrubbers and weather-seeding tools.”

“Like I said,” Bruce murmured. “Failsafes.”

“Which won’t be enough,” Luthor said. “I know your contingency plans already, Mr. Wayne. Fox explained them to me. You need to accept that your resources aren't what they once were. These failsafes of yours won’t even make a _dent_ in Savage’s offensive.”

A miserable silence stole over the room. 

“Checkmate,” Lex said silkily, leaning back in his chair with an air of benevolent triumph.

There was more silence, and Bruce stood. “Check,” he said. “Checkmate, no. Hell will freeze over before you ever have _me_ in checkmate, Luthor. I’ll consider the offer.”

“Don’t consider it for too long,” Luthor said. “On both our heads be it if you fail to make a timely decision.”

“…Alfred and Jason will see you out,” Bruce said tersely, moving toward me. 

When Luthor disappeared from the parlor with Jason and Alfred, I gave Bruce what I hoped was a hard look as he pulled me unceremoniously from the sofa and shoved the crutch roughly into my armpit. “You can’t possibly be considering his offer, Bruce.”

“There’s merit to it,” Bruce told me. “However, it _is_ Lex Luthor.” 

“Exactly, Bruce,” Zatanna said, coming up beside me to help steady my uncertain stance. In my relief to see her alive and healthy, I abruptly hugged her with all my might. She, unflinching, returned the embrace for a good, long while. We both poured our hearts out in our collective thankfulness over the other’s health until Bruce impatiently cleared his throat. We both glowered at him, but got a move on. “Anyway. Like we were saying,” she continued. “It’s _Lex Luthor._ The second you accept the buy-out, you accept him selling you out to the Light—”

“I’m aware of that, Zatanna,” said Bruce. “My own plan is to find out when, exactly, he _plans_ on handing me over to Savage, and whether or not he plans to do the same with you and the others. Equally, I’d like to turn up what his plans for the company are.”

“And from there?” I asked, wincing as a jolt of discomfort burst through my arm.

“Well, if he’s true to his word, and it is, in fact, his own head on the block, I can guarantee that _he_ would sell out to _us_ quickly enough. That aside, if Savage isn’t following through on possible earlier promises to share power with Luthor, you can bank on the latter becoming a turncoat full tilt.” 

“This is true,” I conceded through clenched teeth.

“However, if this _is_ all merely a ploy intended to absorb Wayne Enterprises and appear to be the great hero of the Light that got the Batman _and_ provided the technology that will cut this nuclear winter in half, it’s my full intention to determine his plan of action, and formulate a response,” Bruce said. “You do not need to be worrying about that for the time being, however—you need to be worrying about resting up. The sooner you’re back on your feet, the better, especially if the Light is mobilizing against us specifically.” 

“He’s right, Dick,” Zatanna said gently. Wolf chuffed his own agreement. 

“I’ve been awake for an hour and a half at most and I’m already sick of being injured,” I groused, then hissed as my leg hurt. 

“You’re also still pretty sick,” stated Bruce. “Medicine is in shorter supply these days, so you _cannot_ push it like you used to. Keep your damn stubborn ass in bed.”

“You know, there _is_ such a thing as restraint straps, Bruce,” Zatanna said. 

“Who told you I’m into that,” I cracked, then giggled at my own wit. I then clenched my teeth at the spike in pain as we made our way into the Bat Cave. 

“Dog,” Zatanna muttered, chuckling. 

She and Bruce assisted me into bed, with Wolf resting on a little pile of blankets on the floor beside, once we reached the med-lab. I swore at both of them for hurting the hell out of my injured leg as they boosted it into an elevated position, and then for forcing me to wear the cannula. I yelled at them for sticking me with an IV. Five seconds later I was spouting sonnets over how much I adored both of them and enucleating on my thanks to them for rescuing me. Zatanna gave Bruce a suffering look, and he, by the use of a syringe, put me under while I was still mid-sentence. From that point I was out for a good, long while, caught in the merciful barrens of a black silence.

*******

_Bruce, in the end, determined Lex to be telling the truth, and he accepted the offer._

_In spite of our disbelief, over time, we learned that the protection had its advantages. Living a mimeo of our old lives comes to mind as one._

_Heroism can be taken out of the world, but it can’t exactly be taken out of the heroes themselves. Cheesy, but true._

_“Our aliases might need to be shelved for the time being,” said Bruce, revealing the new, hooded uniforms that he and Alfred had put together, “but that doesn’t mean the job has to be put up with them.”_

_“The news yesterday said that the League was officially disbanded,” said Zatanna, fingering a handful of the cowl that was to be hers. “Which I think could be considered misinformation beneficial to us, but… Marauders have actually been_ killing _non-League-affiliated vigilantes. In some of the worst ways imaginable, too.” She paused. “…I guess that’s an efficient enough way to try discouraging the League.” She looked up, and a devilish look crossed her face. “But…”_

_“Let’s make that difficult for them,” said Bruce, with one of his rare smiles._

_“Difficult? Let’s make it flat-out hell,” Jason said._

_So, once I healed up, we did._


	3. My Love Is As a Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter underwent a minor edit as of 4-10-16 and 4-13-16... Just axed some dialogue, and a bit that I was uncertain of at the time that I originally posted the chapter, and finally just decided to get rid of altogether in the end. XD I know that should happen PRIOR to posting... ha ha, my bad. :-)

_In Gotham, we were informally referred to as “Hoods.”_

_Given the nature of Savage’s enforcers, and the reputation of the as yet unmet Marauders, our tactics on the streets had to be based on subterfuge, surprise, and speed._

_Divert. Hit. Disappear._

_Supplies were strictly rationed at stations in different sectors of the city, first come, first served. In response, black markets cropped up, ones we patronized, supported, and protected. We resurrected a facet of our former League duties by doling out food, any wide, ready supply of which was rapidly dwindling, to those who went without. Medicine. Clothing. Utilities. Clean water._

_It’s why we were called Hoods, apart from the less obvious reasons (the cowls, for one, the criminal disobedience, for another.) Because, rather like Robin Hood, we gave to the poor and needy, and deviled the heartless amassers of their lifeblood._

_Our old teammates did the same where they resided._

_The first night we saw the graffiti, the stylized “H” in spray paint scrawled across the crumbling flank of an abandoned building, we felt a shift in the world. That “H” tattooed across the slab of gray stone was the earliest, real sign that any hope existed amid the black pall of Savage’s brutal rule—all of the raids by soldiers of the Light to weed out the weak, sick, injured, less fit. In Savage’s words, to make up for the time the evolution of humanity lost due to the interference of the Justice League. The enigmatic Marauders destroying homes in their relentless search for concealed Leaguers, cutting down any protestors as they went. Savage himself gathering all non-League-affiliated metas to foster in his vague plans for the globe. And beyond. Doing God-knew-what behind his locked doors with them._

_Naturally, the Hoods’ symbol was outlawed in short order._

_So, just as naturally, we left twice the amount of scrawled “H” symbols across the city._

_And the Batman symbol._

_The Nightwing symbol._

_The Robin insignia._

_Then Zatanna, wearing a look of satisfaction, took her wand, and with a flourish, hatched a “Z” across a wooden door, Zorro-style._

_Divert. Hit. Disappear._

_The taunting graffiti left as a defiant testament to our presence, in Gotham, and in all other cities our fellows called home._

_*******_

“Enforcers came through here yesterday. Looking for your type.”

I looked up at the nervous face of the young woman who stood at her door, her body half-in, half-out of the threshold, her jeans patched and dirty, her face unwashed, her long, wavy blonde hair hanging in unkempt wisps. In spite of the ravaged features that only come from witnessing true horror, she clearly was young—likely no older than in her early twenties, which would have put her at about my age. There was something familiar about her, although for the dim light and the grime on her face, I couldn’t place how I might have known this girl. Given that most of my face was covered by one of the filtering masks that Alfred and Bruce had constructed to protect us from the rampant air pollution, I couldn’t lay her flayed nerves to rest by attempting one of my “stupid-charming smiles” (a term Babs used once) at her, so I adopted the most disarming body language that I could instead, and, from where I knelt by Wolf’s side, handed her a small bag of food and sundries. 

“Good thing it’s been a while since we last hit this sector, then,” I told her. 

“Shouldn’t there be more of you?” she asked, concern overwriting her obvious disquiet.

“We’ve split off into two groups for the night,” I explained, but for Jason’s and Bruce’s safety, didn’t go into further detail.

“…They might come back,” the woman said, her voice audibly shaking. “It’d be better for you to leave.”

Zatanna nodded, handing her a folded pile of blankets wrapped in twine. “We’ll be sure not to leave any traces of us having been here, other than the supplies. Have the enforcers been going through and checking your stores?”

“The enforcers aren’t interested in stores,” said the woman. “…Not yet, anyway. And I know you know the regional man’s a sympathizer, so the supplies aren’t a problem.” She shook her head. “…It’s you I’m worried about. We’d have all gone under a long time ago if not for your kindness.” 

Zatanna’s eyes lightened in a smile half-hidden by her own mask, and shook her head when the woman took her hand, and squeezed her fingers. “Well. Please just be sure your extras are tucked safely away, just in case. Airtight if possible. And don’t keep insignias in your home or nearby. You don’t need to be worrying about us right now, just you and your own.”

“Well, you’re preaching to the choir there, hon,” the girl said warmly. “And… right back at you. Just promise me you’ll take care of yourselves.”

Zatanna, again, squeezed her hand. “Of course. And you, too.” 

“H-how are you so brave through all of this?” the woman blurted suddenly, clinging to Zatanna’s hand, as though she herself were a lifesaving floatation device thrown to her. “I just—I just don’t know how you can stand up to them the way you do. Aren’t you… aren’t you _frightened_?”

Zatanna was quiet a moment, as though thinking. 

“Of course we are,” she replied, in time. “If we weren’t afraid, I honestly don’t think we’d be alive. But… whether we’re frightened or not—” Here, she glanced back at me, her eyes crinkling into a broadened smile, “it’s like a certain thirteen-year-old once told me—it’s what we do.”

The woman, finally, smiled a bit, bequeathing the expression to me, as well. 

“Well. It really helps us feel braver than we might otherwise,” she murmured. She gave Zatanna’s hand a final press with her fingers. “ _God_ , I’d love to do what you do. Give the enforcers what-for and all that.”

“You’re already doing it,” I told her. “So just keep at it. Endure and survive, as the old tagline goes. Savage wants strong ones on his side, right?”

Zatanna nodded. “Survivors _against_ him will hurt him—bad.”

The girl, heartened at last, reached over, and hugged Zatanna, and then me. Again—I was struck by a feeling of overwhelming deja-vu. 

“Thanks, you guys,” she said, and retreated back inside her apartment. 

After this gratifying exchange, perplexing though it was, at least on my end, we wrapped things up in the sector, and, maintaining cover and close watch, returned to the Bat Cave on foot by way of its entrance from the woods. It was bitterly cold and starting to sprinkle a gray, dirty sleet over the bare, clawing trees. By the time we made it back, each of us burst into the Bat Cave like ice-dusted abominable snowmen escaped from the Himalayas. 

Shivering, I headed to a changing room, and shrugged out of the uniform with discomfort that went beyond the cold. My upper arm, leg, and chest still gave me a lot of pain at times, although I was mostly recovered from the gunshot wounds, and the tinny buzzing in my disfigured ear had lessened somewhat. I decided to treat myself a bit and cash in on my share of hot water for the next few days and shower right then. I wrapped a towel around my waist, left the changing room to store the discarded uniform, and headed toward the shower stalls. 

I showered, relieved at the feeling of hot water as it rushed over my chilled body, and equally at losing the itchy feeling of griminess that characterized having rationed water supplies. As I stood beneath the stream, I dwelled on the blonde girl from the east side of Gotham, her identity tickling at the back of my brain, clamoring to be known. Something about this girl in particular troubled me, and beyond the bitter realities of this new world etched across her haggard, prematurely aged face, although I couldn't place what it was.

Nothing came. I heaved a sigh that I drew all the way from my empty belly, and tuned into the feeling of the steaming water as it beat against my shoulders. These extended water use rations. I’d hold onto this small pleasure as tightly as I could.

It was with a lot of regret that I finished up when the tap automatically disengaged. I dried off, rubbing my face against the towel—still soft—unabashedly, like a cat, and headed out of the stalls to raid my insignificant stash of clean clothes. 

Dressed, I headed to my old room in the manor with Wolf, and hunkered down wearing all of my clothes under the heap of blankets in my bed, with my companion’s big, hairy warmth next to me. I knew he missed Conner. And M’gann. And that I was a pathetic substitute for either of them.

Thinking on all my deceased loved ones, still coming off of the baffling encounter in Gotham, I dwelled on Zatanna’s father, grieving now for my friend and her own enormous loss. I hadn’t been there to witness what had happened, since I was hanging out nigh comatose in the Bat Cave’s med-lab, so I wasn’t one hundred percent on the details, but I had gotten enough of the story from Bruce. Locked in battle over the helmet of Fate with Klarion, who gleefully sported some nasty new magical artifact of undetermined sources that gave him some serious oomph, Zatara and Zatanna both were overcome, the former defeated and mortally wounded, the helmet by some ghastly act of invasive sorcery wrested from him. Klarion fled with the helmet, leaving Zatara to die in his daughter’s arms. From what I heard, though, Nabu rejected Klarion—something I couldn’t help feeling some grim satisfaction over. 

I sighed, staring at the inky black of the ceiling, the condensation of my breath on the cold air of the bedroom scarcely visible in the darkness. The silvery puffs shifted across my view of the ceiling as I lapsed steadily into sleep, siphoning down into a dark, murky slumber, full of meandering shadows. They blended into M’gann’s face, melting gruesomely within the flames that engulfed her body as she screamed at me, her lips burned away to reveal blackened, grinning teeth. 

_You could have helped me, Dick, like you could have helped your parents, like you could have helped Wally, like you could have helped Tula—but you didn’t, because you aren’t the man you think you are—you’re just a weak, pathetic child, you’re a failure, a_ failure— _and you burn everything you touch—_

I was shaken awake sometime later, and started when I saw Zatanna standing beside me. 

“What’s wrong?” I hissed, shooting up in bed.

Wolf stretched out beside me, his hindquarters rising a bit, his tongue curling in his big jaws. He sank back down with a groan, settling his chin on his forelegs. At his calm, sleepy disposition, I relaxed—I had thought, upon waking and seeing Zatanna there, that Marauders were in the manor.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, visibly shivering. I saw the outline of a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “I really didn’t want to wake you up. I just…”

I tilted my head as she hesitated, struggling to see her better in the dark. “What’s going on?”

She shifted her weight. “Can I, uh… You think I could climb in there with you?” I heard her teeth chattering. 

“Yeah, sure.” I sat up, tangled in the heap of blankets, the images of that awful nightmare still fresh in my mind’s eye, slowing my movements. I nudged Wolf a little, and he shifted away from the center of the bed. “Can’t sleep?”

Zatanna was quiet a moment. “…Sort of.” 

I took a breath, my heart down pacing now to a normal step within my chest. Ice frosted the window, perceptible even in the darkness. “Cold?” I hazarded, scooting over to free up some space for her.

“Oh, _freezing,”_ she said.

I chuckled a bit, now fully settled down from my initial concern, and lifted the covers for her. It _was_ damn cold.

“Can’t have that,” I told her. “Hop aboard, mate.”

 _“_ Oh my god, _thank you.”_

She clambered eagerly under the blankets, and then, curling up on her left, pressed her back to my chest. I encircled her shivering, frore, slender body with both arms, and Wolf rolled to his side, his back against mine. Even if she was chilled to the touch, though, I had a feeling there was more to this night call than just a prayer for a warm-up. I could feel her heartbeat spitting at the rapid tempo of a snare drum, even through her back. 

I waited a second, and then asked, “So… want to tell me what’s up?”

She was quiet a moment, her body warming against me under the blankets, her heart gradually decelerating in its frantic run. 

“Just... had a bad dream,” she said finally.

I figured. “Mmm. Want to tell me about it?”

She was silent for a moment or two.

“…It was about my dad,” she said into the quiet of the room.

“Oh.” I tightened my hold on her. “…I’m sorry, Zatanna.”

She didn’t speak for a while, just drew her arms up and clasped mine. 

Eventually, she shook her head, and said, “It’s… okay. I mean… it _will_ be okay. I think.” She shifted a little. “You know… Even though he didn’t make it…” She paused, turning to her back under my arm and gazing up at the ceiling awash in shadows, “There’s a part of me that’s just so glad I got to talk to him one last time, even if it was only for a minute.” She sighed. “I know that sounds kind of… I don’t know. But…” Her voice trailed off.

“Well. I remember you saying once that you’d give your soul for that,” I told her, “and that you were totally comfortable making that statement because you figured it was the only way you would ever truly get to see your father again.” I shuffled my arm, laid a hand on hers. “I know how much you loved your dad. I _really_ wish it didn’t end like that for him. And for you. But… I’m glad you got to see him one last time, too.” I laced my hand through her fingers. “And trust me—I know it was every bit as much a blessing for him.”

She turned over, and pressed her face into my chest. I could feel her trembling—a telltale sign of stifled tears. I held her all the more tightly for it, resting my hand on the back of her head, her wavy hair soft as goose down under my palm. 

“Thank you,” she whispered, after a time. “Dick, I’m _so_ glad you’re okay.”

I kissed her forehead. “Same to you.”

She sighed, and nestled closer still. 

I slept fast that night, finally feeling truly warm and comfortable for the first time in weeks, all cuddled between Zatanna and Wolf. 

That first night started a habit of co-sleeping for the three of us, usually in my bed, sometimes in the one Zatanna had claimed as hers in the manor. The few nights we slept apart, we noticed, she about froze into an iceberg and lay chattering miserably without ever dozing off, and we both had nightmares that soundly obliterated any attempt to sleep. So we usually ended up sleeping all bundled together in the same bed. No nightmares, no icy phalanges. Wolf well cared for with Conner gone. Pretty much perfect symbiosis. 

However, I’ll admit a part of me _did_ worry that Barbara’s ghost was going to show up in the manor and raise holy hell all poltergeist style for me sharing a bed with another girl, and an ex-girlfriend, no less. 

But, when everything remained quiet, I slept curled up next to Zatanna, with Wolf at my back or hers, every night for weeks. 

*******

_Savage burned the black markets of Gotham into rubble._

_And executed the regional administrator alongside a throng of Sam sympathizers._

_So we stalled on leaving graffiti, opting instead to keep a lower profile to protect the people of the city by focusing solely on the dispensation of extra supplies. We didn’t interfere directly with the enforcers anymore._

_Some protection, Luthor._

_Smaller scale black markets popped up like a proliferation of creeping flox among the suburbs surrounding Gotham. Always shifting positions. Indicating their next intended site through coded messages. We sourced goods from them._

_Our missions reduced to once every two weeks or so. A different day each time. Coded messages sent out to recognized, trusted sympathizers to know when to expect us. Just like our black market friends._

_Hospitals increasingly strained, underfunded, overcrowded. Continually under investigation by the Light’s enforcers._

_“It’s like Gestapo-inspired health insurance,” Jason muttered. “Got some pre-existing condition? We got you covered. Pax, fucker.” He mimicked firing a gun._

_So Alfred, with all the sprightliness of a man forty years his junior, joined us on our forays into Gotham’s streets, given that he was handy with medicine. Enabling people to avoid the hellholes that were the city’s hospitals._

_At that time, it was just Bruce. Zatanna. Jason. Wolf. Alfred. Myself._

_A small resistance at best. “Extremely strained relief effort” might be more fitting a term._

_But. All of it better than nothing._

_*******_

Returning to manor grounds after work on the streets one afternoon (a time of low activity from Light enforcers, given that they’d grown accustomed to our previously nocturnal habits), Bruce enlisted Zatanna and me to gather a good-ish amount of fallen branches from the woods to dry out for use as kindling. All of us spent most of the time huddled next to the fireplace in the den, given that even the increased amount of energy permitted our residence didn’t account for its size, and there was a snowball’s chance in hell that the manor could be heated effectively with the ration granted. Space heaters in the rooms we used did little good, since they were quite the energy-suck, including the “efficient” ones, and the rooms were too damn big to heat, anyway, even with five of them roaring at once (which always prompted an immediate black-out and cued all of the incumbent frozen misery.) Good thing the mansion sat in the middle of the woods—with all the trees dead and dying, there was plenty of firewood to go around. 

“I don’t know if you’ve gone over this with Bruce yet, but what have you turned up on this weird ‘Purge’ group?” asked Zatanna, dumping an armload of damp branches into the barrow. 

I shook my head, copying her actions with my own burden. “Oh, from what I’ve gathered they’re just a bunch of nutjobs who apparently think Savage is the Antichrist and the Horsemen were… ah, well, just that, the Horsemen from _Revelation_. By all accounts they’re not really religiously motivated, just valiantly trying to protect the earth from the endtimes.” I straightened, stretching out a sore muscle in my back, and went back to it. “I was able to have their network access a phishing site I set up, and from there I gathered the IP address to compromise their routers, but… so far nothing to report. Just a bunch of former cops and ex-military and would-be vigilantes shooting off some Big Talk about plans to give Savage the Punisher treatment and all that. Now—they _claim_ to have been the ones who bombed the hell out of the Lazarus pits and murdered the al Ghuls, but that seems pretty… um… _professional?_ Of them? Unless they hired somebody to get the job done, which is really freaking unlikely. They’re small and underfunded at this point.”

“Are they sympathizers?” she asked. 

“No,” I said. “Definitely not sympathizers. Apparently they’ve marked us, too, seeing as how, you know, all of this was our fault. It’s about the one thing they agree with Savage on.”

She grimaced. “So… _another_ organized group that doesn’t like Leaguers. Super.”

“Yep. Super.”

“You know, I can’t help but notice the irony in their maintained belief that Savage is the Antichrist, and yet they still take his claims as law and blame us for the Horsemen,” she said with a humorless half-laugh.

“Well. Maybe it _was_ something we did,” I said unhappily. “I mean… who really knows. We’ve made a lot of enemies over the years.”

“Okay, sure, but that aside, no one saw them coming, Dick,” she said. “I mean, _no one_ saw them coming. So we don’t know if they were… maybe similar to the ‘Eater of Worlds’ figures, you know, like they fed off the planet’s energies, or something like that… or if they were just like a spaceshipload of rebellious teenagers who, for all we know, are all in alien juvie now for arson and destruction of property while their parents all weep for shame.” She shuffled at the pile of wood in the barrow, balancing it. “Or if the invasion was an organized hit in response to something we did, or…” She paused. “…Or maybe I just don’t want to think about it too much.” She made a pained expression. “Ignorance is bliss.”

“Life’s more painless for the brainless,” I agreed. “At some point, though, we’ll have to determine, _definitively_ , why the Horsemen targeted the earth.” I sighed, and rubbed the achy spot in my chest through the armored padding. “But, until then… We’ve got plenty to deal with, so I guess we’d better focus on that first.”

“Right, but… Actually, come to think of it, finding the source of this mess might help us fix things. Or be the telling factor in whether it’s _ever_ fixed.”

“Now _that’s_ a crappy thought.”

“Oh, _please_ don’t be toochalant about this one,” she said, with a smile. “We’re counting on those keen detective skills, you know.”

“Count on Bruce’s,” I returned lightly. “And _you_ don’t be too whelmed, here.”

Her smile grew into a grin. “This doesn’t sound like the Boy Wonder detective I remember… Is it that hard to stayed whelmed and optimistic in times like these?”

I grinned back. “Duh. Anyway, it’s not like we haven’t tried to figure who the Horsemen are, and why they came here.”

“That’s more like it. Any leads?”

I shook my head. “None that have panned out.” 

“What about Superman?”

“Equally nothing doing. Our biggest worry is that the Light has him. But given the limited resources, it’s hard to know that for sure… I mean, they might have put him to death, like they planned on doing, or they might have sold him to an enemy, or they’re holding him captive for God knows why. I’ve been trying to pick through their network traffic without triggering any intrusion detection systems, but that’s tough going at best.”

“…Damn.”

“Them’s the breaks in this world,” I muttered, by then limping as we made our way to the storage room adjoined to the back of the manor. The slow, steady dropping of sleet that had persisted since that morning had turned into a dingy, quiet snowfall, sprinkling the lawn with patches of ashy white. There was an alien characteristic of peace in the scene, in spite of the deformed, unprepossessing landscape. The snow covered the sodden detritus of the garden in a soft blanket of dove feather gray, as though some kindly god of the sky laid its moldering remains to rest with a promise of sun to come upon its waking. 

We stacked the bundles of wood against the back wall of the storage room to dry, and rather than track the soot, mud and snow into the manor to access the Bat Cave so we could unsuit, we headed back outside to use its entrance in the woods. 

_God,_ my leg hurt. Six or seven months and it still clamored its displeasure in the wretched cold. I hobbled to the showers after ditching the suit, using the walls as crutches, focused only on making it to the nearest stall. My calf screamed bloody murder that echoed through my thigh up to my abdomen and down through my heels. I clenched my teeth and limped over the cold, tile floor that led to the showers. 

Zatanna rounded the corner, and immediately headed in my direction when she noticed me struggling. She was wrapped in a towel, her long, dark hair wet, and the air around her heady with the scent of the soap she used. 

“You okay?” she asked. 

“Oh, yeah, I’m good,” I told her tightly. “Leg just hurts like all hell where my bone got half-disintegrated, no big deal.”

She snorted, and then let me brace a little of my weight on her as she assisted me to the shower stall. I held my own towel up with my free hand. I became suddenly very, very aware of how _good_ she smelled and the feeling of her body, barely covered, close to mine. 

I resolutely did not look at her as I thanked her through gritted teeth, and showered uncomfortably, feeling suddenly a bit unsettled, when she headed for the changing rooms. I wrapped up the shower before the ration was spent, toweled off, and left to get dressed, wondering at the strange, murky fog of confusion that had meandered into and filled up my brain. A throng of inarticulate thoughts and feelings, instinctively familiar, but as yet immaterial, writhed somewhere inside of that fog, a horde of beasts whose presence was known, but unseen. 

I caught up to Zatanna in the corridor that led to the entryway that opened into the den. The distraction that talking provided at least proved something of a deterrent against the shapeless thoughts I wasn’t sure I was ready to see corporealize, and we walked out of the cave together, closing off the entrance behind us by use of the notch in the wall. 

A fire still burned under the mantle, although no one else was in sight. With some gratitude, I fell onto the couch, and pulled a throw blanket across my lap. She joined me, not far off, and reclined on her back with her feet pressed against my thigh, under the throw. I could feel how cold her bare feet were even through the fabric of my jeans, and, unhesitating given our closeness, I caught one of her chilled feet and circled my thumbs under the arch, massaging it. I found, to a sense of profound disorientation, that I felt a little strange, rubbing Zatanna’s feet. It wasn’t like this was unusual for us, or any of my other friends of the opposite sex, even before Barbara had died—to me, touch by itself has never been synonymous with _intimacy_ , and I’m touchy-feely with all my loved ones, so giving Zatanna a foot rub seeming suddenly all out of place left me a bit puzzled. 

Still. It felt good.

We ended up spending a long time talking about all manner of topics, ones that may have once seemed perfectly commonplace, but held a quality of foreign cheer in the dank, festering dimness of the once-inviting den. Jason entered and chatted with us for a bit, and then abruptly stood up and left. I askance watched him go, but didn’t worry about his sudden, awkward departure beyond some momentary wondering. 

Some hours went by, although I can’t say how many. We continued talking. Zatanna recalled horseback-riding with her dad in the summers they spent in the Italian countryside, her first Communion and how she had loved her frilly, white frock that she spun in until she was so dizzy she tripped over the hem of the skirt and ripped it, her first mission with the team and the way she thought it was just about the cutest thing ever when I leapt, totally undignified, to greet her. I smiled at this last divulgence, and mentioned to her that I had thought the same thing of her when I first saw her enter the cave at Happy Harbor (and, as she knew, failed to hide as much.) 

There was silence, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. She had shuffled closer to me in the cold left by the dying fire by that time, her legs stretched across my lap, her head on my shoulder. She looked at me, her expression unreadable, her eyes a deep, gunmetal blue in the smoky half-light of the den. My eyes unwittingly strayed to the elongated cupid’s bow of her lips. My thoughts wandered to New Year's in the Watchtower, all those years ago, my nerves asudden humming with the vivid memory of nights in the dark quiet of her room in the Cave, the feeling of her hair, silky and heavy, as it brushed across my face, the sounds of collective, breathless pants as I closed inexperienced, curious hands over warm, soft flesh. 

_Now is not the time for this,_ I thought, trying to force a cooler head to prevail. _Not now, or ever._

I was about to gracefully shuffle out from under her to head to my room, where I planned on shamelessly spanking it while thinking about Barbara, and how much I missed her, and still hadn’t accepted that she was dead—and in so doing, keep things unrisky, uncomplicated, and comfortable with Zatanna. 

Before I could move, however, she said, “Dick.”

I looked at her, and I don’t think I could have moved if I’d wanted to—and I didn’t. I recognized the expression she wore immediately. It set my heart off at full speed like a spooked horse. 

A smile spread over her features, and she adoped an affected voice. “…‘My love is as a fever, longing still, for that which longer nurseth the disease…’”

I made a face at her. Her expression aside, I couldn’t tell if she was goofing around after talking about past feelings, or if this quotation was meant to be something serious. “…Are you quoting Shakespeare at me?”

She grinned. “Yes, Boy Wonder—I am. It _fits._ ” 

I became aware of her hand on my shoulder, its pressure light and barely there, but enough to turn a good portion of my attention to it. I was quiet as her words sank in. I was a little familiar with Shakespeare’s sonnets, given that I’d read them for class in high school. I obviously couldn’t just rattle this particular one off verbatim, but I knew the gist. Unrequited love for someone who brought you pain, and yet the love continued regardless. 

“Dick,” she said, abruptly sobering, “I never stopped loving you.”

I remained quiet. This truth, even though it really shouldn’t have been all that big of a shock, considering that at least some part of my brain was well aware that she still nursed a soft spot for me, hit me like a blast of lightning, and a feeling of further disorientation came over me.

I had assumed I’d wind up with Barbara until the ages-old death did us part. And, I realized with a tremendous pang, it had. This hurt. A lot. But I was still alive. And so was Zatanna. Who had blatantly just admitted to having feelings— _real_ feelings—for me, even after all of the years had passed. 

(And yes, a big part of me openly cheered over it.)

She looked miserable, I saw, in the wake of my silence, and she moved to extricate herself. I caught her, staying her motions, and, since I didn’t really have any reasonable words to express how I felt without sounding like a complete idiot, I just leaned down and kissed her. 

I half-expected her to pull away—as I’d thought already, this was not the time, or place, for such things. But she rose up to meet me, and opened her mouth with some abandon, her hands locking in my hair. I felt the tug of her teeth on my lip, gentle, but insistent, as she readily angled to her back, pulling me down with her. Her hands tugged at my hair, ran down my shoulders, snaked under the fabric of my shirt, pressed on my back. I fought with her top, seeking her breasts, soft handfuls, punctuated by the firmness of her chest beneath. She lifted up under me, her hands now grasping me by the bare skin of my hips, sneaking under the waist of my jeans.

“Dick,” she breathed between kisses, “I love you. I love you. I love love love love you.”

My lips moved to her throat, the smooth expanse of her breastbone, hampered by her clothing. I yanked her shirt up and unceremoniously chucked it somewhere across the room. I encountered some issues with her bra, which was a multi-hooked thing meant more for function than form. With a laugh, she lent me some assistance, and undid the hooks and eyes to grant me access to what I pursued. I rose up, running my hands over her breasts, arrested by her form in the glow of the fire. _God,_ she was gorgeous. I leaned down, inhaling the scent of her chest, drawing an areola into my lips. She arched her back into my touch, pulling at the fetters of my own clothing, dragging the shirt over my head, fumbling at the waist of my jeans, and this continued thusly, on down the line, until all of the clothes were in haphazard, scattered piles on the floor. I had a disquieting thought that one of our housemates might happen upon us as we cavorted in the den, but sneaking buck-naked to a bedroom seemed like it was probably a riskier business than just staying put. That aside, while I might have battled for a cooler head earlier, I’d officially forked the wheel over to its hotter counterpart, and it was in complete control—especially now that Zatanna had grasped my erection and was roving her grip over it. 

For as much as I wanted her to continue, I knew it would be over in short order if I allowed her to, seeing as I was fairly out of practice at that point. I drew back a ways until she released me. I kissed a line down the rapidly warming surface of her skin over her abdomen, past her navel, until I reached the cleft at her thighs. I felt her jerk a little, but her hips rose, and a low sound escaped her throat as I targeted all the spots to make her sing grand opera. I inhaled the sweet, almost nostalgic familiarity of her essence, drank it in, absorbed it. Her voice rose in timbre, her hands worked violently in my hair, and then, finally, her body locked itself into a fixed, trembling, yogic bridge. I sensed every contraction as she shivered, and then moaned softly, her back slowly relaxing, her hips sinking. She twitched, sighed, turned her face into the carpet beneath her. I was so hard I was in _agony._

I climbed over her, then, and closed my mouth on hers, her lips warm and pliant. Her knees lowered, butterfly’s wings that opened by way of invitation, as I slid up her body, and _in_. I expelled a breath, then pulled another in and held it, overwhelmed for a moment when she closed tight around me like a hot, narrow fauces. 

I lost all restraint and just about every tie to reality from the first movement. I was conscious only of feeling Zatanna’s form under mine as she rocked in tandem with me, her hands spread over my back, sweeping trails of sweat over my skin, then locking under my arms to grip my shoulders. Her neck was feverous under my lips, her hair damp and sticky against my face, her fingers sharp and pressing hard into my flesh. I quickened my rhythm, feeling the burning in my body culminating, straining, fighting to burst, until I reached the maddening point just at the edge. 

I made to withdraw, seconds away, but Zatanna’s hands shot down to grasp my buttocks, her thighs strangulating at my hips, stalling me. 

“Please,” she murmured into my ear, “please.” 

I couldn’t refuse that, and didn’t want to, anyway. 

I went in deep, and felt the dam break gloriously right in that instant. My ears popped, my entire body pulled itself taut even as it hitched and shook, and my vision funneled down into the blackness of space, broken up by flickering spots of light. I didn’t even notice that I’d been inarticulately vocalizing praises to God until I became aware of the absence of the sound. With a sense of rushing water that flowed out from my appendages, and took my strength with it, my body went numb and weak. I sank down, stars still twinkling in my slowly clearing vision. 

God, I’d never had an orgasm that practically set off fireworks before. Ever. Granted, I’d also never pulled the goalie on a girl before. Big firsts are big firsts. 

I eased some of my weight off of Zatanna, and lay catching my breath beside her, one arm slung across her chest. 

Damn, I needed that.

Some time passed, the only sound in the room that of our breathing. I could feel the sweat on my back cooling in the pervasive chill. 

Finally, I reached over to finger a lock of her hair, and smiled at her as she looked over at me.

“…I love love love love you, too, by the way,” I said, tracing the contour of her cheek with my thumb. 

She returned my smile, and as I moved to kiss her then, I realized that what I said was the truth, although I was clueless as to how it was even possible—how the fire of that old love, eased over time into the steady, unwavering candle glow of abiding friendship, had suddenly been rekindled to burn so vibrantly anew. I felt, somehow, that I should have experienced some serious regret, and that I had in some way betrayed Barbara’s memory, but much like sharing a bed with Zatanna, I didn’t feel anything of the sort. 

That didn’t stop me crying uncontrollably while I lay in bed later, with Zatanna beside me, as I thought about Barbara. Again, though, I didn’t cry because I was ashamed. There _was_ no guilt. Even though I felt that there should have been at least _some_ remorse, regret over making love to Zatanna wasn’t the culprit behind the waterworks. 

It had finally begun to sink in that Barbara was gone. As in done deal gone, never coming back gone. I realized, lying there with the tears streaming unchecked over my cheeks and temples, that I had cried for all of our late loved ones, but not much for Babs, since the world had shifted. 

Since I first came to in the med-lab, some lavish portion of me had still expected to hear her voice echoing through the Bat Cave as she expounded at Bruce about something, or sought me out to push my buttons in some way and get us both chuckling over it. But that part of me had at last yielded beneath the truth, and I found I no longer waited to hear a voice that had long since been cut silent.

I turned onto my side, with my back to Zatanna, and just sobbed, until it escalated to such a decibel that it woke her up. Her concern on finding me that way quickly grew frantic, and she asked me repeatedly what was wrong, but I couldn’t even bring myself to turn over and face her. After a time, she ceased to press me, and just laid a hand on my arm. It’s common enough for people to cry after sex for a load of reasons. And to be honest, I’m sure she knew why I did, although she never said it.

Zatanna wordlessly kept that hand on my shoulder, running her other over my hair, until I’d finally cried myself out. I gripped her hand, clutching it as though it was my safety rope, and if I’d had any water left in me when I was done, I’d have been completely staggered. Drained, I sagged into the wet pillowcase, and dropped way off, Zatanna’s arm encasing my chest from behind, holding all of my parts together just as she had since I was brought to the manor.


	4. With Vilest Worms to Dwell

_Stark silence. Lack of birdsong. Ashen not-light. Black, scabby trees. Skeleton roads. Contagions filling mass graves. The cloying odor of burning bodies._

_Streets we’ve encountered churned up and half-melted into vast, stretching, uneven congealings of twisted black mire, sparkling with a dusting of ice, calcified in the cold. When out of water, best to stick to those, in spite of the lack of cover. No tracks. And the jagged, pocked coagulate discourages even Marauders to travel on it. Once upon a time, these roads were highways._

_Animals not all died out yet, but rarely seen, about as commonplace in the barren wilderness as Bigfoot. Some old, half-rotten roots available in some places. Wolf has a nose for them. Occasionally he lopes off and trots back with a couple of scrawny rabbits or other small game so scraggly as to be borderline unrecognizable. We’re well on our way to starving, but we’re not dead yet, thanks in no small part to Wolf._

_And the occasional kindness we find in the blanched, comatose world._

*******

Wolf bristles, his ears perking and his head whipping to look behind. He chuffs a warning, and I turn and use the Wayne Tech binoculars, still powerful, to spy what’s setting him off. 

Marauders. Very distant, unlikely even to see us with their tech at this point. Still, they’ll catch our scent soon enough. 

Time to head to the water and hunker down for a while.

“Good job, Wolf,” I tell him. “All right, kiddo, let’s move.”

I take my son by the arm and guide him to the tree line, sliding over the slick, ice-caked decline, leaving rivets in the snow. As Wolf and the boy make their way to the woods, I kick the snow back the best I can, although it’s pretty useless to bother. The hounds will have our trail eventually and know we came this way. 

We scrape a laborious sketch through the woods, weaving insensibly through the trees, remaining careful about tracks, working to confuse the hounds. My son and I climb up the trunks of the trees to leap from one to the next, dropping down a good ways off from where we last were, all of this intended to throw the beasts off our scent and make it harder for them to track us. It’s the first time I’ve seen the kid truly smile in longer than I can remember.

We have a while before the Marauders catch up to us, but better not to push it. We continue in the confusing rhythm, but when the Pigeon River is in sight, my son clambers atop Wolf, and I follow suit. He leaps in broad, zig-zagging bounds, and then into the water of the river. 

With the boy on my shoulders, I make my way through the waist-deep water just at the shore, my teeth chattering fit to crack, my muscles all bunched up into wooden planks, and my chest drawn taut as a washboard. We continue on like this until we come across a littering of debris—old, battered car parts, rusty, tangled wires, mildewing lengths of splintered tree branches, goo of indeterminate origin. The occasional bone or bit of dead person. All drifting or piled into mounds of trash, primo hiding places. The Marauders will figure we’re hiding under one of the garbage copses on the shore, but we’re not in the business of doing what they expect. I just hope they’re not picking up on that pattern.

I’ve been hypothermic so many times now the feeling is becoming old hat, so frankly, I’m not afraid of it anymore—it’s a condition I can remedy with Wolf, some blankets, pine needle tea, and a nice fire. So long as my son doesn’t succumb to it. 

We find an enormous block of wreckage snagged and clinging to a sticky, tar-crusted boulder of mashed-together debris, a mephitic barnacle of rods, wires and branches all stuck with trash and detritus. It’s closer to shore than I’d like. I consider, and figure that if I don’t chuck too much away from the mound, the garbage cleaving to the snarly, metal fingers and brittle tree branches can serve as substantial cover, like an umbrella. Although the kid has a real good handle on his abilities and he can chuck around veils like they’re going out of style, he’s definitely not on his mom’s level yet, and his veiling needs some outside help, like this waste parasol.

So, while my son sits atop Wolf’s shoulders, I discard bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam until I’ve crafted a small, imperceptible cove that we can all stack up under. I squeeze inside, and kneel down up to my neck in the frigid water. Reaching out through the hole, I draw my son down from Wolf’s shoulders, and carefully bring him into the thicket of rubble with me. He gets his legs and part of his seat wet, but at least his trunk is dry. He climbs atop my shoulders and hunches down, his head pushed up against the ceiling of clotted debris. Wolf, the water level reaching his shoulders, wades in to squeeze beside me.

“Finishing touch?” I ask my son, my voice chattering humorously with my rattling teeth. “Remember, like your mom told you, the rushing water will dispel any trace of magic you’ve used.”

“Yep, because water is a diffuser _._ ”

“That’s right.”

“Okay.” He concentrates, his brow furrowing, his jaw set. “Invisibility… _lleps ytilibisivni…_ ”

There’s a slight, almost undetectable shimmering that surrounds us like water dribbling over glass, and then it fades.

The environment appears muted somehow, as though shrouded in a mantle of vapor, and my son looks down at me. 

“Good?” he asks.

“Perfect.” 

He gives me a smile, and we settle into our freezing, watery shelter like a family of overgrown turtles to wait out the Marauders.


	5. Do Not So Much As My Poor Name Rehearse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANTE!! CAVEAT!!  
> Please read...  
> NOTE--If you are a reader of this fic starting from the beginning (Chapter 1) as of post the date of 4-13-16... You may disregard this message! :-D  
> OTHERWISE... HERE GOES... AND I AM SO SORRY ABOUT THIS...  
> But I made a BIG edit in Chapter 3 that will have altered the chain of events a bit. :-(  
> I know I should NOT post such huge edits after chapters/stories have been posted, this was a HUGE flub on my part, and I am SO VERY SORRY. :'( However, it was a change that salved some SERIOUS dissatisfaction I suffered over the quality of Chapter 3 (which I was very uncertain about at the time that I posted it--I was VERY unhappy about how that chapter originally turned out), so I bit the bullet and went through with the changes.  
> SO... IF YOU ARE READING THIS AS A READER WHO STARTED THIS FIC BEFORE THE DATE OF 4-13-16... PLEASE REREAD (part of) CHAPTER 3!!!  
> Hopefully the changes come off satisfactorily... and no one is too angry with me... :-(  
> I am so sorry. :-(  
> Lesson learned, though, DO NOT POST UNTIL ONE IS SATISFIED. XD And in other good news, I have secured an excellent beta reader (at last! OH HAPPY DAY!) so I can promise that THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.  
> Thank you for your understanding and patience, and I hope that you like the changes!  
> NOW! AGAIN! This all being said, if you are a reader of this fic starting from the beginning (Chapter 1) as of post the date of 4-13-16... You may disregard this message! :-D  
> Love to all, and again, a thousand apologies. *bows* and *hugs* LOTS OF *hugs*  
> \--EF

_The same morning the ashen snow came, at a time of the year that would normally have been marked by the first bronzing, drifting leaves and the earliest chill in the air, Zatanna told me upon waking that she was tired and didn’t feel well. She remained home from Hood duties that day, and the following._

_She withdrew in this manner for several weeks. Appearing peaked, green, distracted. All of us worrying that she was sick—certain she’d picked up one of the terrible fevers that ravaged Gotham._

_Except Bruce, who was, if anything, shrewd. Carrying a sense of anticipation._

_Then, the evening we returned from the streets and found her crying._

*******

The morning following the romp with Zatanna and the embarrassing-ass hours of crying after was spent breakfasting on oatmeal bowls with dates and walnuts and condensed milk in the parlor by the fireplace, where we stole the warmth and light from the flames. Zatanna was notably more sanguine, much of her previous bubbliness revisited in her demeanor. I felt markedly more cheerful, myself, when I dwelled on it. Jason was still asleep. Bruce was silent, impassive, gazing at us from his habitual seat.

He peered doubly hard at me, his face gone from emotionless to knowing, when Zatanna disappeared to seek more tea. 

“Did you use protection?” he said abruptly.

I stared at him. “What?”

“Did you use protection?” he repeated.

I gaped stupidly at him, completely aghast. “You’re kidding, right?”

He shook his head, his expression one that I _really_ itched to smack from his face.

“How did—how did you _know?”_ My voice squeaked a bit, adding to my indignity.

“Not exactly difficult to read your subtle signals. I _am_ the world’s greatest detective, remember.”

I felt my face and neck go all sorts of hot, and I shrank miserably into my seat. “Oh, dear God…”

Bruce huffed a slight chuckle at my discomfiture. “Please. I saw it coming from a mile off, Dick.”

I gave him a disgusted look. “…Ew.”

He smirked. “Come off it. Last I checked, we’re all adults here. Besides—aren’t you always the one reminding me you’re not a teenager anymore?” 

I mutely shook my head in disbelief.

“Point being—you know you can talk to me,” said Bruce. “Even about this, if you need to.”

I paused, considering what to say. The truth was, I _did_ need to talk about it. There were still a lot of emotions flying around, even in spite of all the crying.

“I… I don’t know, Bruce,” I said. “I guess I have some mixed feelings. Like… I’m _happy,_ but… That seems just reallyinappropriate.” I heaved a sigh. “And I keep thinking… I should at least _feel_ like I betrayed Barbara, being with Zatanna. Especially… so soon after.” I stared at the fire, trying to articulate my thoughts. “But…”

“But you don’t?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t. Which just feels so _wrong_. Like it doesn’t make any sense.”

He gazed at me for a moment.

“Dick,” said Bruce. “Barbara’s gone.”

I said nothing. I felt sick suddenly.

“And not to be presumptuous,” he went on, “but I doubt she’d want you to spend your life crying in the fetal position somewhere over her death.”

I sat, watching the fire as a log sparked and shot flurries of orange across the hearth.

“What happened to her?” I asked, a question I’d wanted an answer to, but was afraid to ask.

“It’s probably better you never find out,” said Bruce. “All I _want_ you to know about it… is that we tried to save her life.” He sighed. “She was just past saving.”

“Did you even… I don’t know, _try_ a hospital?”

Bruce nodded. “Of course we did. Jim had her en route to the nearest hospital in barely a few minutes of finding her. Just… She didn’t have a chance, Dick. She died on the way there.”

I felt, all at once, like I might get sick, right there. I took a breath, and held it, concentrating for a moment on clearing my head.

“…I should have been there, Bruce,” I said after a time.

“You _were_ there.”

“No, I mean _been there._ As in… protected her, gotten her out of that. And, God—Conner. M’gann. Roy—how could I have let that happen. _Any_ of it happen.” I clasped a hand over my face. “Such a failure. I am _such_ a goddamn failure. I let them all die.”

“You didn’t let anyone do anything. You were immobilized, you were captured, you were imprisoned, and then you were shot. Three times. If not for the grace of God, you wouldn’t have made it out of that at all.”

“…They all died.”

“There was nothing you could have done.”

“…I could have stopped breathing.”

“Would that have made any difference?”

I was silent.

“They knew the risks, Dick. All of them did.”

I shook my head.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Bruce. He leaned toward me. “Dick. _None_ of it was your fault.”

I held the urge to start crying again inside a swollen, bulbous, painful lump at the back of my throat. “…I just wish it felt that way.”

He nodded. “I know.” He sighed. “…I live with that every day, too.”

There was a moment of quiet as the fire crackled beneath the mantle. 

“So,” said Bruce, dispersing the pause. “I’ll ask again. Did you use protection?”

I fought the discomfort that’s just part of talking about sex with a parent. I wasn’t sure what would be worse, talking about this with Bruce, or with my dad. “Uh… Well, _no_ , but last I checked, condoms are… kind of a luxury of the long-forgotten First World, Bruce,” I said. 

Bruce gazed at me levelly. “Not so. They oftentimes are rationed to convenience stores and bazaar stands, even now.”

I was quiet, experiencing the first twists of misgiving in my gut. 

“Just… Maybe take a little more care next time,” he admonished. 

I still said nothing, just trained my eyes on the fire as he rose. Unexpectedly, he laid a hand on my shoulder for a brief moment. I looked up, a little surprised. 

“Times like these… tend to _bond_ people,” he said. “I think they also… maybe inspire the urge to create something out of nothing.” He paused. “Just… Like I said. Try to be more careful in the future.”

The famous last words.

*******

_Zatanna telling me, through her tears, what she’d been up to while we were on duty in Gotham._

_Seeking a midwife._

_The news engulfing my brain like a series of ravenous worms that devoured it and left no remaining matter for cognizance. I sank heavily into a chair, shellshocked and stricken blind, deaf, and mute, all at once._

_“…Maybe the midwife is wrong,” I offered helplessly, when I found my voice again._

_“She still has pee sticks and_ was _an OB/GYN, Dick,” she snapped, uncharacteristically talking to me as though I were profoundly stupid. “She said there’s no doubt. I came up positive on two tests._ Two _.”_

_I sat dumbly for a moment, until she buried her face in her hands._

_“I’m_ Catholic!” _she wailed._

_I rose, and pulled her close, just holding her without speaking. I couldn’t tell her it would be all right when I didn’t believe it myself._

*******

Days passed, none of us really talking about this new development in our weird family life; nothing beyond how Zatanna was feeling, anyway. 

Days became weeks. 

I didn’t absorb it for a long time. Something about it felt surreal, as though I hovered in a prolonged out-of-body experience, removed from all that unfolded around me.

Weeks compiled into months, until Zatanna’s belly ominously rounded and grew. The midwife, on a rare, furtive visit made to the manor, pronounced her to be at a hale and healthy twenty-two weeks gone, by her reckoning. 

I felt like dissolving into goo. 

Bruce’s regard of the situation (naturally) remained detached and pragmatic, as he encouraged her to remain at the manor with Alfred when we ducked out to undergo our Hood work (she was verbosely unhappy about this, but acquiesced.) Jason’s reaction was my own’s antithesis—and if anything, mirrored Alfred’s, who found the whole business “most exciting.” I would never have liked Jason for the type to get psyched about honorary nieces/nephews, or even babies in general, and found myself saddened that I was completely alone in my terror.

Zatanna herself had shed the initial misgivings that we had earlier shared in small time, and seemed, in fact, very accepting of our new circumstances. She dedicatedly read the book the midwife gave her, bartered for or purchased little baby doo-dads from the Gotham shops and bazaars, took up knitting, and overall just seemed happy as a clam, although she occasionally displayed some irritability over the limited food, since the only thing she wanted was watermelon (kind of in short supply.) But, in spite of grousing over the craptastic rations and the decided lack of estrogen in the manor, her spirits seemed high enough.

I tried to share in her excitement—I really did my damnedest. The response from our dispersed former teammates and Leaguers was overwhelmingly positive. But, even so, I felt at best hopelessly in the dark, just kind of going through the motions and regurgitating the right words at the right times, even though my heart felt calcified against the whole thing, a granulomatous mass in my chest that denied reality inside its hard, unfeeling shell.

Taking an infrequent video call from Artemis one evening not too long after the midwife’s visit, I mustered up the biggest, beaming, I’m-so-excited-to-be-a-dad smile that I could, donning a veneer of delight, knowing what was sure to come from the other end of the comm.

“Heyyy… congratulations, Papa!” Artemis said elatedly when the connection settled. 

Called it.

“Thanks,” I told her, my grin Ken doll wide, threatening to snap at any second and reveal the grumpy Skeletor face beneath.

“How’s it going over there? Everything okay? Any news?”

Grateful to divert the topic to business, I filled her in on the situation in Gotham, talking fast and talking a lot—a means of purposefully tip-toeing around the dreaded baby subject. I cursed inwardly when Zatanna unexpectedly entered mid-mango, and with a squeal of joy to see Artemis on the other side of the video call, plunked herself down beside me to join in on the conversation. 

I was totally doomed.

The girls greeted one another, Artemis cooing her congratulations, begging to see Zatanna’s belly. I just sat and wondered how, if I were a liquid state of matter, I was still supported by the chair beneath me. 

“You getting ready, Mama Bear?” Artemis asked.

“Just about,” Zatanna replied happily. “We’ve got the room mostly ready and I’ve been knitting like an old lady in a rest home. Oh, and get this, we actually found a working baby monitor at the bazaar the other day… Now we just need to find enough batteries.”

“No shit!” Artemis said.

“Shit you not,” I chimed in. “Looks like tech is still alive and well.”

“How are _you_ doing, Papa Bear? Stoked for Baby Bear?” 

At Artemis’ beaming face, I donned the inane Ken smile, and said, “Oh, you know it.”

I stuffed the sick sense of dread that sifted through my gut like a roving hookworm, and answered more of her questions, all programmed, canned responses, all the while praying she couldn’t see through my affected cheer. Praise the Lord, she seemed wholly convinced by my false excitement.

The thing is—I’m sure Zatanna wasn’t. Thank God she was patient, subtly taking the wheel by showing Artemis some of her latest knitted handiwork. She _had_ gotten very good at it in a short time, but all those booties and hats with cat ears and onesies with prints of bears worked into them only served as faces of my very real fear.

Thing is, I _was_ scared. Actually—scratch that. I was _terrified._ I wasn’t intimidated by the idea of being a father, in and of itself, although I’ve never thought of myself as the paternal type. I’m not even really much of a marrying or common-law type, either, while we’re being honest. “Pffftttt, you’d break out in hives at the thought,” Babs once said when I brought up the hypotheticals of leaving the masks on the shelf and striking out on the fabled trail of domesticity. I was miffed by these words at first, but couldn’t really deny that they might have had some merit to them. Still, the thought of a baby wasn’t an… _unspeakably_ dreadful one, and at least some part of me caroused at the prospect of being a dad. 

I guess I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of bringing a kid into the hideously ugly place the world had become. It seemed downright _cruel_. There were barely enough rations to go around, and even we, with more rations granted, had jettisoned some serious pounds between the lot of us. Zatanna’s form resembled something like an olive on a toothpick. I found myself continually fretting over whether she got enough food and clean water, whether she was too active or not active enough, whether her rest was of good quality or not, whether she was in decent enough health overall. I figured myself for a damn hot mess once the kid showed up. The thing would burp and I felt it a guarantee I’d flip my wig. I could already visualize myself hovering over the baby as it slept, convinced it would forget how to breathe and suffer SIDS. 

My heart skittered in sickening panic when I felt the first really, truly pronounced flutterings of movement beneath my palm, where Zatanna had guided it to spread over the arch of her abdomen. But observing the look of delight as it crossed her features at the feeling comforted me in my moment of fear. Heartened somewhat, I raised the hem of her top over the gentle curve of her belly, and, tracing the movement under my hands, I touched my lips to it. 

First step in the right direction to bringing me where I am now.

When Zatanna was close to the thirty-week mark, I returned tired, dirty, and crabby from Hood work in Gotham. The night was particularly blustery, and not in a fun, red noses, hot chocolate, campfire sort of way. The wind pierced clothing, flesh, and bone with ease, and seemed to go past the physical and into the very soul, locking it up into a rimy neverwhere of dusky chill. 

Zatanna’s midwife, a woman named Max, had opened her door, and seemed, at best, jumpy when she saw me standing, wearing my Hood uniform that hid my features, with the small bag of food and hotchpotches I had for her in hand. She nervously looked past my shoulder, her door scarcely open more than a few inches.

“Everything okay?” I asked, starting to get edgy at her squirrelly behavior.

“Did you see the news this morning?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I slept until nearly two this afternoon. I was out late last night at the black markets and stayed up after to help get these bags put together. Why, what happened?”

“My assistant got caught with a Batman insignia and was lined up with the other sympathizers enforcers caught in the last week. They were all executed.”

“…Oh,” I said. “Jesus, Max, I’m sorry.” 

“That’s not the half of it,” said Max. “I really hate having to tell you this. But she talked.” 

“What did she give them?” I had, by then, readied my communicator (before you ask, heavily encrypted) to give the signal to GTFO. 

“Just that you Hoods were still active. And that you sourced from black markets, which she also gave them info on. …I shudder to think about what’s going to happen to the vendors when they’re found.”

“Yeah…” I lowered the communicator. “Damn.” 

“Damn, indeed. You _really_ ought to get out of here, and not come back. Ever. I mean it.”

“What, and leave you to starve on the rations they’ve been giving lately?” I asked her, extending the bag of goods. When she didn’t accept it, I stubbornly pushed it at her. “Not going to happen.”

“We’ll manage,” she said. “The black markets probably won’t be around for much longer now, given that the enforcers know more about how they operate, thanks to Bette.” My heart jerked as I squinted askance at her, recognizing this name. She heaved a sigh. “Look, we all appreciate everything you Hoods have done for us over the past… oh, hell, year or however long it’s been since you showed up. Who really keeps track of time these days. Anyway. Just… maybe it’s time to hang up the cape. You’re going to get all of us—and yourselves—killed. And don’t think they’ll just give you nice, efficient head shots, either.” She paused, and squared her shoulders. “Listen. Like I said. We’ll manage. We couldn’t assume that the Light would let you guys hang around forever. Besides… We’re used to being self-reliant, you know. A lot of what you do just feels like charity at this point.”

“Max,” I said, “hardly. You’re giving back to us more than you know.”

She frowned at me, but after a moment, accepted the goods. I’m sure she figured out who I was by then. I didn’t think Max was anyone to worry about, though, and I’ll tell you now that my gut impulse was right.

“We’ll lie low for a while,” I promised her. “And we’ll spread the news to the black market vendors, make sure they ditch their goods and do the same. In the meantime, take care.”

“You, too,” she said, slamming her door shut. I heard the lock turn. The rattling of the chain. 

Bruce, Jason, and I finished dispensing goods, then hauled ass back to the manor at speeds that might have impressed the Flash family. For as long as Luthor was true to his word, which he had been so far, we were okay—but obviously, the people of the city weren’t. Better to clear out and get ghost for a while.

I entered the cave in a very rough mood in the wake of Max’s news. I had already spent my water rations that week and couldn’t shower. Terrified, pissed off, hungry, itchy, greasy, frozen to the point of stiff clumsiness, and resentful of just about everything, I lobbed the uniform onto the floor, and stalked up into the manor. I’d have given my left nut to be able to suffocate my roiling emotions in a mountain of pizza right about then. My stomach rumbled, and I hoped I’d at least dream about food once I fell asleep. _If_ I fell asleep. If it wasn’t that my thoughts wouldn’t quit careening through my mind like a stampede of elephants, it was that I was too hungry to drift off. 

And damned if my thoughts weren’t careening right about then, remembering Max’s words. 

God damn it. That girl on her stoop, all those months ago. The one I recognized, but couldn’t quite remember. Of _course_ it was Bette Kane. I couldn’t believe it had taken me until now to figure that out. 

And while I had no way of knowing beyond a reasonable doubt that Max’s assistant was _the_ Bette or not—I had the pretty overwhelming suspicion, bordering on certainty, that she was. 

How could I have failed to place her? All at once it seemed it was barely the previous evening that I had flipped her onto her front atop the kitchen table in my old apartment in Bludhaven and gone at it with her like we were a pair of rabbits on my nineteenth birthday. 

Once she might have strolled with the regal air of the teen queen she was, that she exuded privilege and confidence. Now—she wasn’t even a _shade_ of what she had been, standing scared and skittish half-inside her doorway, lauding our supposed bravery as though it were supernatural. 

And now, with every miserable likelihood, like so many others, she was dead—lost to this world in its manifold horrors.

My entire body vibrated as I stalked the halls, all of my limbs thrumming with the inky-dark whispers of anxiety and fear. Thoughts came in spurts, dissolving into nebulous disquiet and worry. If the messages that I sent our black market friends didn’t reach them on time, they were right in line for the same firing squad that Bette, and our sympathizers, all faced, every last one of them. The reel played unsought across the screen of my mind’s eye—all of these lesser-sung heroes, the resources behind our generosity, lined up like livestock past their working prime, hoods pulled over their faces, capitulums disseminated into Rorschach splatters of red on the muddy, chewed up asphalt beneath them. A rapid-fire replay of Conner’s horrifying death played back, unbidden, across that same screen before I could curb it. My stomach lurched, a pins-and-needles weakness tingled through my core, my sight went to murk. I threw a fist into the wall, and sat down to calm myself. 

No sleep tonight.

I headed out into the garden on a prayer that the cold air would act as a shock of water. I found Jason there, smoking a cigarette under the bony remains of a lilac tree. 

“You know those things will kill you,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. I helped myself to a seat next to him.

“I know, that’s kind of why I smoke, Dickmunch,” he said, unruffled. “Here, you want one?”

He proffered a pack of cigarettes to me. I shook my head. 

“What, the ash in the air not enough for you?” I asked. 

“Not doing the job fast enough apparently,” he said, taking a deep breath, and then shaking his head when it smoothly entered his lungs. “Case in point.” He took a drag off of the cigarette, finishing it, and then ground it out under his heel. I watched as he studiously lifted the nub from the ground, checking its snuffed end, and then placed it in the front pocket of his backpack, which leaned against his leg. He lit up another cigarette, and looked over at me. “So.” He exhaled a film of gray into the darkness. “Big day’s coming up, huh?”

“Big day?”

His lips quirked up in a smile at me. “Due date, dipshit.”

“Oh, that. Yeah.”

I sat for a moment, dwelling on Bette, the overpowering sadness, anxiety and worry surging like a red tide at the edge of my brain, and I chewed at a thumbnail, not desiring to speak of either my impending role as a father in this real-life _Land of the Dead,_ or of the dead and would-be-dead that comprised it. I inhaled the scent of the smoke that swirled from the butt of Jason’s cigarette, and glanced over at it. I found myself experiencing, for the first time, a genuine curiosity.

“You ready to go all domestic there, Papa?”

I sat, staring at the ground as though it held a particularly fascinating secret, and didn’t speak for a while.

When I finally did, I blurted, “I’m scared to death, Jay.”

He stared over at me. “Oh, come on, man. You?”

“Yeah.”

“Bullshit.”

“No bullshit.”

He took a drag off of his cigarette. “…Coulda fooled me.”

I gazed at my shoes, studying the worn laces. Finally, I swiped his cigarette from him. 

My initial intention was to chuck it, but instead, my muscles moving beyond any conscious will of my own, I took a drag off of it. 

“Dude, get your own,” Jason said good-naturedly, snatching the butt away from me, and offering me a separate cigarette.

My throat felt a little scraped, burning a bit, and I fought the urge to cough, thereby betraying myself on the sad fact that I’d never smoked a cigarette before. Hashtag, Chronic Boy Scout. 

I accepted the little white cylindrical tool of what I’d once regarded as surefire lung cancer, and didn’t meet Jason’s eye as he lit the end for me. I wasn’t even really a hundred percent on how to go about smoking the damn thing, but I surreptitiously copied Jay’s motions, until my head spun and my throat felt like it had been resurfaced with a pumice stone. 

I finished the cigarette, and shook my head when Jason offered another. 

“So. You’re scared to be a dad?” he asked, lighting up another of his own.

I was silent, forming my thoughts as the garden swung in busy circles around us. I closed my eyes, ground my fist into my forehead. I was enjoying some weird side effects I’d never been warned about from that first cigarette. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

“Zatanna freaked out when she first found out, too, didn’t she?”

I nodded. My hands were still shaking, and not just from the cold. “Yeah. I mean… not like I did, but yeah, kind of.”

“You know… if you’d said something about that, I knew someone who could’ve taken care of it, cheap and quick.”

I shook my head. “Zatanna wouldn’t have wanted that. I wouldn’t have, either.”

He nodded. “I figured as much. Kind of why I didn’t ask.” He took a drag, looking up into the sky as the heather smoke wafted onto the wind. “You know, I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit, here, and I’ll tell you why—from what you’ve told me about your dad, he sounds like he was a pretty stand-up guy.”

I nodded. “He was.”

“Model father, from what I’ve heard.”

Again, I nodded. “Yeah.”

“And your mom was pretty special, so you _and_ Bruce have told me.”

I didn’t speak, my burning throat now growing and closing off my breath. This wasn’t talking about how much I’d give for an order of pizza, my left nut still included, or what other bodily parts and necessities I’d fork over not to catch myself singing, “Warm face, warm hands, warm feet, ahhh wouldn’t it be lover-ly” every morning I awoke and had to meander my way out from my cave of blankets and into the deep freeze of the bedroom. I’d have given my goddamn _soul_ if it meant my parents could have been there then. I had this overpowering, childish sense that if they were, everything would be all right. Like I was five years old. I suddenly wanted another cigarette. 

“So I mean… with that influence behind you, you’re bound to be a natural at the whole parenting thing,” Jason continued. “Plus, you’ve always adapted to every situation like a damn chameleon. It’s actually really annoying how well you handle new circumstances while the rest of us suffer.” He shook his head, grinding out his cigarette, and, again, placing the butt in the pocket of his backpack. Fussily hiding the evidence of his misdeeds from Bruce. “You’re probably worrying too much.”

I shook my head. “That’s not it, Jay.”

He looked over at me, and when I didn’t elucidate, he inclined his head. “Okay, so what is it, then?”

“…I just don’t know if it was the right thing to do. By the kid, I mean.”

“How so?”

“How so—you take a look at the world we’re living in lately?” I asked. 

And with that, the fears poured out, all of them belching up and spilling from my mouth, a _bad_ case of word vomit. “God, Jay, you think it’s fair subjecting a _child_ to it? What happens when Luthor’s protection runs out? What happens if the scrubbers don’t work like they’re supposed to and it only gets fucking _colder_? We’ll all freeze to death inside that mansion, just like everyone in those cardboard hovels on the streets out in Gotham.” I heaved a sigh. “And what if one of us gets blown away by an enforcer or caught by those damn Marauders while we’re doing Hood work? We’ve all heard the stories about those people, you think they’ll sing a chorus of ‘The Lord is Kind and Merciful’ and make it quick and easy? Oh, look, _another_ goddamn orphan among us. I mean, am I going to even be able to protect Zatanna? And what about the rations, you think those are going to last long?” I ground my fingers into my temples. 

“Dick, Zatanna can handle herself,” Jason said. "And honestly, so can you." 

“That’s not the point,” I sighed. “I’m talking about shit beyond just dealing with enforcers out on the streets, not that that isn’t bad enough—I’m talking about resources that are _rapidly_ depleting that I’ve got a finite window to get my hands on, and in ways that I can still sleep at night. These are dangers that aren’t just people, or monsters, or whatever. It’s dangers on _top_ of that. Like… how I’m going to _provide_ for a child. I mean… _How_? How can I really take care of it? We’re only just starting to see this, but the signs are there—that good people _do not make it_ in this world. I’m pretty unconvinced you can be a good person and actually survive. And to really take care of a kid in this place, you _have_ to be a survivor. So what does that mean? And what’s that going to take a couple of years from now? Honestly, that scares the _shit_ out of me—I think maybe that more than anything else.” I expelled a defeated breath, and slumped. “I just don’t know, Jay. So yeah. I’m scared.” 

Jason was silent a moment as he gazed at me, and then he glanced over at the manor, and unzipped his backpack. Riffling through it, he shifted its contents, until he pulled up the lining in the back seams. From there, he produced a couple of mason jars, all full of a clear liquid, reminiscent of paint thinner.

“Talk like this, bro—you’re going to need something stronger than just a cigarette,” he said, chuckling. 

“What _is_ all that?” I asked, frowning at the bottles.

“This,” he said, taking the mason jars and setting them down on the ground at our feet, “is some of the strongest—and _best_ —damn moonshine you’ll ever encounter. I got it as a gift from this girl’s dad for getting her home safe and undetected after she got stuck taking care of sickies in Gotham past curfew.”

“That’s some payment,” I observed. “All I’ve gotten is a pair of socks.”

“Hey, those are very useful in today’s world,” he said. “Anyway, if you want any of this, or all of it, it’s yours.”

I frowned at the mason jars. The idea of getting black-out drunk _was_ a tantalizing one. All of the images that haunted me, the piles of bodies—big _and_ small—left by enforcers, the ugly signs of the creeping viruses that ate their way through the teems of homeless that plugged the alleys of Gotham, the pictures drawn by my own imagination from the startling rumors carried by fearful mouths of the depravity of the Marauders.

It _was_ tempting.

“…Maybe,” I sighed. “I don’t know. I _do_ have a kid on the way…” I laughed humorlessly. “Frat boy days are pretty well over.”

He shrugged. “It’s up to you, dude. You’ve arguably got a little more on your plate than the rest of us these days. I don’t think anyone’s going to get too chuffed if you get shitfaced this one time.” He paused, and smirked at me. “Besides, you were never really a frat boy, you lame-ass square. Although, I gotta say, you _were_ the one I figured would have their cock catch up to them first.” He raised a hand in a gesture of victory. “I win the pool…”

I laughed. “Fuck you.”

“Hey man, wrap it before ya tap it.”

I didn’t respond, and stared at the bottles of moonshine. 

_Well,_ I figured with another sigh, temptation outweighing responsibilities, _it’s just this once. Maybe I’ll actually_ sleep _tonight._

Before I could talk myself out of it, the rowing team of worries and cares that dogged my every breath guiding my hand, I reached down, and unscrewed the lid of one of the mason jars. I started slow, sipping at the harsh, clear liquid, its passage setting my throat and chest alight as I swallowed. 

Jason half-smiled, lifted a separate bottle of moonshine, and popped the lid from it. Raising it, he said, “Cheers, man.”

We both drank, and then Jason placed his mason jar beside him. 

“Well, kids,” he said jubilantly, “guess we’d better get this party _started…_ Check this shit out.”

From his backpack, he pulled an old Apple iPhone, and powered it on.

“Holy shit, you still have that thing?” I asked, properly dazed by this time.

“Yep,” he replied. “It’s not connected to cell service or Wi-Fi, obviously, but the music app still works.”

“Sweet,” I said, watching as he passed his thumb over the screen. “I just use mine as a mobile hot spot these days.”

He laughed. “Nerd.”

He turned on some tunes, and we set to sharing the whiskey. 

My memory, I’ll be frank, gets pretty lost in the shuffle from here. I know we ended up finishing the moonshine between the two of us as the night went on, and honestly, that brew would have been enough to knock a hippopotamus flat on its ass end. I’m astonished neither of us wound up in the decomposing remains of Gotham General with flagrant alcohol poisoning, sharing space with plague-riddled patients that would happily share their cooties with us before we passed away a couple of sots in the long-forgotten ER. Flipping through Jason’s music collection, we raised our voices to caterwaul with one band after another, loudly bellowing what lyrics we knew unembarrassed into the freezing night air, progressively getting more inebriated as we did. Shortly after, I fell to my back in the wintry mix of snow and muck beneath me, and stayed there, watching the clouds as they strolled by uncaring overhead, taking no notice of us as Jay sprawled out in the snow beside me. One moment we were making snow angels, the next weeping about some past trauma or another, and then the next reenacting auditions for reality TV amid raucous laughter. 

There’s a big black spot in my memory here, and then, a recollection of both of us, drunkenly giggling and heading back into the manor. I lost Jay, and stumbled around, trying to find the bathroom. I hared off into the parlor, where Bruce, with a cup of instant coffee and a bowl of some undetermined breakfast stuff, sat by a merrily crackling fire. 

I stared at him, laboring to make out his features through my jumping, unsteady line of sight, uncertain if he was angry, amused, disgusted, or all of the above. I giggled and slurred, “Uh-oh, busted…”

He grunted. “Garden party?”

I snorted, by then dissolving into gales of laughter for no reason. “Oh, I’m in _trouble_ …”

“I guess Jason’s around somewhere,” Bruce said, sighing, and placing his cup on the end table beside him.

“Ten points to Gryffindor,” I sputtered. “Or wait… you’re more of a Ravenclaw… now I think of it… _Gryffinclaw._ ” I burst into a fit of further giggles.

“…Hmph. Guessing you had a good time?”

“I’m full,” I announced, and with that, went down on my face in front of the hearth, entirely out for the count and abruptly swallowed up by a black nothing.

When I came to, I was still lying where I fell, tangled in a heavy, gnarled, unmoving heap in front of the fireplace, which was guttering down to cider-colored embers by then. Wan, charcoal dawnlight weakly sifted through the crack in the curtains that shrouded the window. It pierced my brain like the sharp, fractured spindle of a spinning wheel. I shivered, inexplicably drenched against the wooden floor, my clothes cumbersome and clinging to my wet form. I lifted my head, and hissed in a breath, stiffening into a tense, solid plank when my head about split itself down the middle of my skull. My limbs shook, my stomach rolled, and in an instant, I was sick all over the cherry flooring. 

When I was through retching, I clasped a hand to my head, one finger swollen and unmoving, clearly broken. Blood dripped from a half-coagulated wound on my elbow. Beneath my palm, I felt the swelling of a goose egg, burgeoning under my hair. When I rolled to my back, I was aware of muscles I had never taken conscious note of, a massive bruise on my hip, and the assault of an ammoniac smell—I’d pissed myself sometime while I was passed out, the cause of the wet clothes.

 _Nice, Dick, you fucking idiot,_ I thought, clasping my head, staying the unendurable throbbing. 

“Well, look who’s coming around,” came the voice I least wanted to hear right about then. “Get moving and clean this mess up.”

I squinted up at Bruce from where I lay, covered in my own piss and puke, and didn’t respond. I didn’t dare shake my head at him—and not because that gesture would shove him over the edge. I was afraid my skull would go to pieces like blown glass. 

_“Now,”_ he said, his tone morphing into the booming, authoritative Batman thrum. “We’ve got work to do.”

I acquiesced, knowing damn well that I deserved this, and rose to my hands and knees, breathing gingerly so as not to send my walloping head into a poof of bone dust, swallowing the lumps of bile that urgently recurred at the back of my throat. 

I made it to my feet, lurching to the nearest washroom, where I peeled away the sopping wreckage of my clothing, pausing every so often to vomit. Using a small douse of water and a cloth, I wiped my bruised, filthy body down the best I could—my share of the water ration wouldn’t be renewed until the following week. 

I _really_ should have known better—when drunk, I start out jovial or horny depending on who I’m drinking with, but all it takes is that one damn sip to send me over the edge into the characteristic that _truly_ typifies my drunk style—rotten sick. My Irish genes unfortunately haven’t favored me in that regard. 

The mere act of suiting up through the physical reminders of my improprieties and the ever-rising tides of nausea rendered my muscles and brain about spent, but the entirety of that day nevertheless saw me striving through that catastrophic hangover like a toiler of the sea, as I joined Bruce, Alfred, Jason (who, to my equal parts sympathy and satisfaction, was every bit as hungover as I was), and even Zatanna, encumbered by her by then pronounced, distended belly, as we headed into Gotham’s streets to preserve goods from the black markets, and destroy all evidence of them having been there—hopefully affording our vendor compatriots a bit of protection when the enforcers gathered the clues and came down upon them. 

I worked miserably in the sleeting rain, carrying the bags and boxes of goods that vendors had acquired since the last successful black market rendezvous to the truck that Zatanna had painstakingly veiled, and that we would later drive back to the Bat Cave to shroud deep within its bowels. Even with the assistance of my companions, it was a demanding labor, magnified by my sorry state. But I cleaved tightly to the thought of the vendors, who had become our close, and implicitly trusted, friends—there was Dave, the young father with the twin girls, Mari, the schoolteacher whose son had died fighting the Horsemen with the National Guard, Zara, the doctor who tirelessly left on house call after house call to see to the sick and injured, Mark, the retired police officer and his long-time partner Carl, the world-class marathoner and biochemical engineer (both good friends of the Gordon family, and whom I remembered very well from the pre-Horsemen days.) Whether or not I had to pause every few minutes to dry heave or fight the whomping in my head, I would do this for them—to safeguard them and the work they did, and damn it, I would see it through.

I had just unloaded a stack of boxes—heavy with jars of kerosene—into the bed of the truck when Zatanna approached me.

“Here,” she murmured, furtively slipping something into my hand. “From Zara. Don’t let Bruce catch you.” 

I looked down, and saw that the burden she’d transferred to me consisted of a small bottle of filtered water, and two aspirin tablets in a clear pop-out package. 

“You’re an angel,” I breathed, and her eyes crinkled into a smile over her mask when I squeezed her hand as she moved to continue in her work. 

I ducked down at the head of the truck, and yanked my mask down around my neck, hiding my face the best I could beneath my hood and scarf. I downed the tablets and water, and held my breath a moment, tossing up a prayer that they would stay down. When I was assured that they would not make a precipitate reappearance, I rearranged the mask over my face, and hopped back into the fray, now marginally spryer. 

Sometime before the morning waxed into the afternoon, Max appeared, and subtly approached me to whisper a few bits of information that she’d acquired since the night previous into my good ear. When she was done, I finally asked her the one query I was frightened to make.

“Your assistant. Bette,” I said. “What was her last name?”

She gazed at me a moment. 

“Kane,” she said, finally. “Bette Kane. Former society girl, apparently. Left behind her parents and her sister, Kate.”

My heart fell.

“I’m sorry, Max,” I said mechanically, my knees gone gelatin-weak, my mind screaming with too many thoughts to make even one of them out.

“Could have been worse,” she said. “…She was brave in the face of everything, all things considered. Gave them enough to satisfy them, not enough to incriminate anyone. We should probably call her something of a hero.”

I nodded, recalling Bette’s words to us all those months ago, her desire to stand up to the enforcers. She certainly had. 

And it had gotten her killed.

I turned from Max, made my way to a shadowy corner in the alley, yanked my mask off, and threw up until the muscles in my gut twined into a knot as big and hard as an iron block.

When I returned to work, securing my mask under my hood, Bruce approached me.

“Any word from Max since this morning?” he asked, his voice low, no ears nearby as I hefted a pile of burlap bags full of first aid kits, slinging them over my shoulders.

“Yeah, got a message a few minutes ago,” I replied, scrubbing freezing rainwater and, to my own surprise, tears from my aching eyes. “The assistant didn’t give specific names, apparently, only previous black market locations. That shouldn’t give the enforcers a lot to go on, though, since they’ve always been randomized.”

“What was Max’s source on that?”

“Witnesses,” I replied. “Apparently they had all the sympathizers out in the park to question them, cordoned off but in plain sight of what civilians were there.” I grimaced. “Pretty sure that was calculated.”

Bruce nodded, his expression darkening. “Scare tactics. Which in my experience work pretty damn well.”

“Yeah, more often than not,” I muttered. “Anyway, I guess that’s all she gave them, before…” I frowned and trailed off, dumping the bags into the bed of the truck.

“…Before they executed her.”

I nodded, my heart sinking into my squirming gut. “She was the first, apparently.” 

Bruce’s brow furrowed as he hefted a basket of root vegetables into the truck bed.

“Bruce,” I said. “It was Bette Kane.”

He turned, and gazed at me a moment, the rain steadily pattering around him, shielding his face. 

“…Pick it up,” he said after a long period of silence. “Still got work to do.”

I sighed into the sleet, and somberly mumbled, “Aye, aye, captain.”

We rolled out of the city in the veiled truck, all hailing every hope skyward for the vendors, and made our way back to the Cave without detection. Unloading the truck and securing and cataloguing the goods took another several hours, and by the time I _finally_ unsuited, I think I’d have passed for a convincing extra in a zombie film. I wanted and _needed_ a shower—I was deadened with cold and still rank with the stink of piss and vomit (with BO from the day’s exertions thrown into the mix.) I was about to yank on a set of clean clothes and pray the reek would diminish when Zatanna knocked, and entered the changing room.

“Hey,” she said, half-smiling.

I sighed, knowing what was coming. I stood, buck-naked and by that time completely unapologetic as such in her presence, holding the shirt and track pants. “…Hey.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Oh, just peachy,” I fibbed, shaking the wrinkles out of my tee shirt.

“Listen—”

“Zatanna,” I interrupted, busying myself getting dressed, and deciding to just get this whole unpleasant conversation over with before I performed another epic faceplant, trailing puke all the way, “before you say anything, I am _so so so_ sorry about last night. It was stupid, and juvenile, and I _never_ should have done that to you—”

“Oh, Dick, stop,” she said gently, waving a hand. She had unsuited, and was dressed in a pair of thermal leggings and an oversized, hooded sweatshirt. Even with the bulk of the pullover, I could distinctly make out the rounding of her pregnancy as she sat down on one of the benches that lined one end of the stall, and leaned back a little. “You don’t need to apologize to me. That’s not why I’m here.”

“…It isn’t?” 

She shook her head, and smiled. “No.” She raised her hand. “Scout’s honor.”

“Are you for real right now…?”

She looked down at herself. “Last I checked… Anyway, not to say I don’t appreciate the apology, but you don’t have to say you’re sorry, Dick. Besides…” she gave me a humorous grimace, “I’m _pretty_ sure Bruce punished you enough.”

“Might have been enough if you hadn’t shown up with that aspirin,” I corrected her, belatedly returning her smile. “Like I said, angel.”

“Oh, nah,” she said, shaking her head. “There would’ve been no angelic anything if it hadn’t been for Zara and her spare aspirin. You should probably thank her first.” 

“The thought had to come from somewhere, and I’m guessing you were the brains behind the operation.” I thought on that a moment, and sobered (no pun intended.) “So, wait, Zatanna… you’re not even… I mean, like, a _little…?_ ” 

Again, she smiled. “Mad? No,” she said. She chuckled. “Come on, Dick, coming from you, it’s _funny.”_

“…Remind me why we’re laughing?” I muttered, rubbing my head. 

She laughed in response. “Fair point. Anyway… I’m assuming that after today it’s _not_ going to be a regular thing.”

“Yeah, I think Bruce made sure of that,” I confirmed ruefully. 

By now sick and wobbly on my feet, I sat down half-dressed by Zatanna, praying she wouldn’t pick up on my disagreeable fragrance. I was nonplussed when she leaned against me. Either she opted not to breathe through her nostrils, or she was miraculously unbothered by it. 

“Back to why I _am_ in here, and not just for the live nude program.”

“Hey, I charge for that, you know.”

She adopted a serious expression, her brows furrowing. “Hmm… Can I pay you with a blow job?”

“…Is that a serious offer?”

She gave me an appeasing look, tilting her head to one shoulder, her lip quirked up at one side. “I don’t know, I can offer that, or my share of the water tonight…”

“Can’t I have both?”

“Separately, or at the same time?” She grinned at me. 

“I’m a hedonist. I’ll take them at the same time.”

“Dog,” she said with a snort. “I’m serious, though. If you want it, the water’s yours.”

I leaned my head against the wall. “Oh, dear _God,_ yes.” Straightening, I stared at her. “Wait, are you actually offering?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. Her nose wrinkled, and she leaned back a little. “I think you might need it more than me.”

I reached over and hugged her the best I could around her belly and through my own aching muscles. “I. Love. You.”

She laughed into my bare shoulder. “I love you, too, Boy Wonder.” She pulled back, and placed her hands on my shoulders. With a shake, she said, “Now _please,_ for the love of all that is holy, _please_ go take a shower.”

I chuckled, and stood.

“Also, Dick,” she said suddenly. 

I turned, and faced her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her face no longer bright with levity. “About that girl. Bruce told me about it a little bit ago. I didn’t know you knew her.”

I sighed. “I didn’t recognize her at first. She was a… sort-of friend of mine from GA and those society shindigs Bruce and I went to. I didn’t even know Max had taken her on as an assistant.”

Zatanna was quiet a moment, and then said, “It’s so sad.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“If you feel like talking about it,” she said, “I’m here.”

I smiled at her. “I know.”

I left her in the changing room, then, and headed to the showers.

Once there, I gave way under a good cry. Gratitude for Zatanna’s undeserved generosity and understanding, my physical discomfort, and the emotional overload of the last hours had finally waylaid me. And in the end, although the relief that the warm water afforded was short-bought in the permeating chill of the cave, I felt marginally alleviated for the tears as I dried off and got dressed. The manor was polar-cold, having no energy ration permitted at that hour, and I about sprinted through the shadows of the halls to get to the warmth of the bed that Zatanna and I shared.

She was already slumbering under a mound of blankets, and shifted a little as I entered the room. Drawing the covers back, I climbed into bed with her like a blast from the Arctic Circle, and she rolled over to face me, letting me commit grand larceny against her body heat. Roles reversed in our nightly routine. Wolf hopped onto the bed, and settled down at Zatanna’s back. 

As I relaxed, my weary muscles sinking into the mattress, and my overwrought nerves finally untangling, the troubled thoughts that stuck to my brain guttered quickly, and all wakefulness promptly dropped off the map.

I started awake some time later, my heart pounding a quick-fire rhythm like a piston in my chest. The sheets were damp with sweat, and my breath came in short, heavy bursts that condensed into puffs of silver on the chill air inside the bedroom. More damn nightmares. This new one that wrenched me awake clung to my consciousness by sticky threads, and, in a panic, I twisted up out of the blankets to seek Zatanna.

She slept unmoving with her back to me, and even as the claws of the dream slowly retracted from my mind and I became more aware of my surroundings, tendrils of disquiet wound deep into my gut as I observed her motionless form, a darker silhouette in the shadowy room. 

I frantically reached over to shake her, and about lost a lungful of air in relief when she stirred under my touch. She moved, in her sleep, to lean against my chest, with one arm stretched across my abdomen. The swelling of her belly pressed against my side. I slowly relaxed, sinking down into the pillows on my back, and tried to catch my breath.

I had dreamt that I had returned from the streets to find Zatanna sobbing over a wide, gleaming, garish red puddle, the only color in the dingy snow that somehow fell inside the manor. I had tried to run to her, but couldn’t find purchase on the slick, alabaster floor. When I, at last, reached her, she had looked up at me, and through her tears, told me she had lost the baby. And, although she had tried to find it and keep it in her pocket, it was gone. 

I couldn’t shake the feeling of sickened despair that I’d had in the dream, and I reached over to lay a hand on the curve of Zatanna’s belly. Warm, rounded in my palm, but no movement. I nervously held my breath, and tried to remind myself that babies sleep in utero, and that was the only reason for the unnerving stillness.

When I was about to shake Zatanna awake to lay my fears to rest, I felt a series of little twitch-flutter-shifts under my hand, and I sagged, exhaling. 

Losing your parents is bad. Losing your friends is bad. There isn’t a single word that can even remotely do justice to the hell of losing a child, born or unborn. 

I lay there, my hand remaining on Zatanna’s belly, feeling the little fish-flops of movement under my palm. Since the baby’s shuffling didn’t wake her up, I figured she had to be pretty fried. Pregnancy was a significant energy-drain—that day had to have _really_ taken it out of her. I kissed her forehead. My heart slowed with each roll and kick, and once it fully settled into its normal report, I was beyond exhausted. The movement under my fingers ebbed into a restful, unfrightening motionlessness.

I left my hand where it was, and fell asleep to dream, thank goodness, of nothing scarier than munching a bag of Doritos. 

The following morning, when I first woke up, I saw, through the sleep-grit still stuck in my eyes, Zatanna sitting up in bed, her shirt pulled up to leave the graceful bow of her abdomen bare even in the chill. Unaware that I was awake and watching like a total creeper, she ran a hand down over the breadth of her middle, and then paused, her fingers spread over the little space just beneath her belly button. She smiled. 

I closed my eyes, and to my astonishment, felt entirely happy as I slept again. 

*******

_The first scrubbers were at last deployed in use, and had been for maybe a month, when I woke up to Zatanna shaking my shoulder._

_Seeing her brow furrowed, her hands pressing hard into the blankets. Asking if she was okay, and her reply, “Not sure.”_

_We’d had several false labor alarms over the past week or so. But she’d complained about feeling ill and uncomfortable most of that day. I sat up in bed, and laid a hand on her back._

_“Oooohhhh, ow-ow-ow,” she hissed, lowering her head, her shoulders arching._

_“Is this it?” I asked, tossing the covers aside, but not moving until she gasped, no longer able to speak._

_The next hours passing in a screaming blur._

_I took her down to the med-lab and booted everyone out when they came inquiring. Zatanna point-blank stated she didn’t want them in there. Wolf bristled protectively beside her when they persisted, seeing them off for good._

_Max couldn’t come. Civilians were shot if they were seen out after curfew. Too risky for her to chance coming. I was alone in this, apart from Wolf._

_Zatanna wandering in aimless, distressed circles, going to the ground, rocking on her hands and knees, leaning on me as she shuffled and tried to concentrate her breathing. The water leaking, then giving out all at once in a wide puddle under her feet._

_Things really got moving at that point._

_The lights straining the energy ration. Trying to block out Zatanna’s agonized bawling, and failing. Her heels pressing painfully into my shoulders. Trying to time the pushing, although I barely had any clue what I was doing. Probably making a million mistakes. My gloved hands up past the wrists in places they had no business being, feeling and guiding the baby in the way Max had told me as it slowly cut its swath toward the cold misery of the world. Witnessing the crowning, the shoulders, seeing the face all screwed up and bloody, mucked with white goo. The looping, jellied wires of the umbilical cord, one vein wound about. The rank outpour over my arms to make a wreck out of the clothes I wore. Catching the gloop-covered burden, a boy. Pale fluid following in a splash. No tears._

_I folded the cord down and cut it with surgical shears, wiped it clean, and clamped it, although the baby’s screaming about smashed my heart into bits when I first pinched the shears closed through the slick rope, the consistency of raw chicken. The APGAR seemed okay, 8 or so, to my untrained knowledge. I hurried to take the boy off to clean him up in the sink while Zatanna passed the afterbirth (“_ Much _easier than delivering a baby,” she would later say.)_

_“Holy trademarks, Batman—if you don’t look like a Troll doll…” I said, observing the poof of black hair that stuck up in all directions as I dried the baby’s squirming form with a towel. I wrapped him up in a knitted blanket, Zatanna’s handiwork, making careful certain that his head was covered, and then, as I stood with him settling down in my arms, his screams quieting into little fusses and gurgles, his limbs shifting similarly to how they had inside Zatanna, I, at last, paused._

_I took everything in right about then, as I first looked my son full in the face, and the world just spectacularly ground to a total halt. No movement. No sound. Nothing._

_Pouting mouth like Zatanna’s. Her nose. His eyes opened—my eyes, only a slate blue, but apt to change, whether to his mother’s topaz or my own tanzanite or to some other color. Astounding how many details you pick up, even so early on. His hand, so tiny, curled around my index finger. Feeling that grip, still gazing at his face, I smiled. All at once, I was completely and irretrievably over the moon for that kid._

_Zatanna had been waiting without complaint, but I could see she was getting impatient by the time I returned. Eagerly, she tried to sit up in the bed, but in her fatigue, her arms shook, and she got stuck in the pillows underneath her. With a chuckle, I helped her up, and then unloaded the baby into her arms._

_His eyes met Zatanna’s. There was a long period of total quiet, and a smile slowly spread over her face. Damned if I didn’t want him back by then, but no way was I interrupting a moment like that._

_I sacked out next to them to make a tight fit on the narrow bed, and made a Herculean effort to unwind from the intense strain of the night. Zatanna fiddled with nursing. She showed the baby to Wolf, who touched his nose to the full head of hair, and chuffed. I forced myself to rise, got the room cleaned and disinfected, and then I readily stole the kid away again. It seemed so weird that I could love someone I didn’t even know yet so immediately and encompassingly. I wondered if this was how my own father had felt when I showed up, and, with a wrenching, heartsick pang, I wished that my parents, and Zatanna’s father, could have been there. The friends we'd lost, whom my son would never know. Wally would have been the boy's godfather._

_When we finally invited the others down, I found I didn’t want to give him up to let them meet him. I reluctantly held him out, all but growling and baring my teeth. Jason remarked that he felt like he accepted a cub from a Papa Wolf that would just as soon eviscerate him as let him near the kid. I lightened up a bit from there, but had a very hard time keeping it together when we announced his name, and not just because of the unintended_ Terminator _reference._

_Conner John._


	6. Rest You Here, My Sons

_Muck, bubbling and clawing at our arms and legs, brackish, icy water cleaving to our ankles like the desperate hands of the drowning, as we scrape our way out of the mildewing umbrella of trash. The Marauders moved on, the sky overhead roiling with black, watercolor clouds. The wind screaming in our ears, a wild banshee bellowing warnings of death all around, the trees shivering and swaying, creaking atop their roots, as though frightened of the keening and the wailing. The raw sting of the ice and sleet as it bites frantically at our skin, leaving it scarlet with a wet rash of cold and windburn. Forcing myself over the shore, sopping wet, my son leading the way with Wolf, the packs bouncing over his shoulder. Wrestling the tarp against the wind, battling the lack of feeling in my digits, driving the pegs through each notch in the tarp’s corners into the ground, tethering the length of the opposing end to the trunk of a festering oak, barely able to see through the unsteadiness in my vision as it goes blurry. The tarp flaps riotously in the wind, but it holds, and shelters us from the ruthless elements passably enough. Conner shedding his wet jeans and shoes, then mumbling some words to spark a tiny flame in the portable stove, the spit small and shaky, but, thank God, remaining lit. Convulsively shaking, I peel off my soaked clothing, clumsily pat myself down with a towel, and sit naked under a pile of blankets beside the fire, with Wolf at my back, until, at last, the numbness in my body recedes in a wash of tingling phalanges and a rush of shuddering in my torso. I dress in dry clothing as Conner heats up the can of pork and beans, and sits beside me. We share it in silence, and give some to Wolf. Then, as the storm howls forlornly around us, we stretch out to sleep, sharing our body heat just as we shared the food, not needing to speak before we drop off, all of us confident and safe in each other’s company._

_*******_

The storm has let up by morning, and after Conner and I breakfast on an apple each, we launch into training.

“Don’t forget, just like Grandpa showed you,” I tell him, holding my palms up. 

“Shouldn’t you be protecting your hands?” Conner asks quizzically. 

“Eh, don’t worry about them,” I say. “It’s so cold I can’t feel them, anyway.”

We move through a series of combination attacks, defensive maneuvers, basic technique work, blending his mystical abilities with physical ones, throwing effective acrobatics into the mix. It’s hard going in the bitter chill and with the relentless, aching hunger, but the boy does well, displaying a lot of resilience and enthusiasm, as children I’ve learned generally do. His flexibility is excellent, his movements quick and clean, his combination work effective, his responsiveness good, his speed unrivaled—and trust me, speed is _imperative_ if you’re going to take the Parkour approach to combat. Given his quick reflexes and response time, teaching him to think on his feet in a combat scenario shouldn’t prove too difficult. That’s a total godsend—I have a feeling that the time for him to apply his skills is coming, and soon. The thought chews at my gut, turning it uncomfortably in sick circles. I don’t know how Bruce was able to stomach me going into battle at a year Conner’s junior. My father, I know, would never have stood for it. 

Granted, the circumstances were arguably pretty extenuating, and Bruce was always shrouded in the cowl—the Dark Knight was like an angel in black that sat forever on his shoulder, with him wherever he would go. It was his life, his calling, all of his _self._ Taking on a barely nine-year-old boy, and one who had really _seen_ _some_ _shit_ , when he had little hands-on experience with children had to be like getting chucked into the deep end without the vaguest clue of how to so much as dog paddle—even with our shared traumas. So, Bruce did what he did best—he approached his new role as a father in the identity that he felt the most at home in.

I wonder what identity I feel the most at home in, now, thinking on Bruce, reminded painfully of him as I train with my son. Flying Grayson. Robin. Nightwing. Hood. Sam. Fugitive. 

Father.

The session now finished, both of us out of breath and sweating in spite of the chill, I reach out, heavyhearted, and embrace my son. 

“Love you, kiddo,” I say into his damp hair, my voice low and cracking.

“I love you, too, Dad,” he says cheerfully, oblivious to my sudden gloom. 

“Well, now that we’ve thawed out a little, what do you say we get moving and stay that way?” I ask, getting it together and shouldering the packs. Wolf rises and shakes out his coat. “We’ll freeze our tuchuses off just standing here.” 

“I’m hungry,” Conner says.

“Me, too. Let’s go see if we can turn up some noms somewhere.” 

“Sounds good to me,” he proclaims fervently, and we set off, heading southwest.

*******

_The rain streaking like saline ink from overhead, icing into a solid cake of heather gray that chokes the tree trunks, bowing the branches overhead in dribbling sculptures that trace our scalps as we walk. Our muscles weak, drained, battling the unrelenting brutality of nature even when at rest. Wolf trotting alongside us, occasionally shaking out his fur in blooming sugarpuffs of frost. Struggling to keep our footing atop the glassy, reflective surface of the cloudy, silvery ice._

_Trees rising like the outstretched hands of reverent believers, reaching for the sky as through entreating it to return to the world the sunlight it has long since withheld, the bony claws of their branches fingerlike against the graphite sketchwork of the clouds overhead. My lungs blistering with each breath, threatening a torrent of coughing, my nose raw, running, and stinging despite the protective scarf. Conner struggling through drifts of snow that rise past his hips like icy quicksand, his respiration becoming increasingly ragged, his coat wetting through and steaming in the rife cold. He’ll sicken if he continues on like this. I haul him up into a piggyback, and slowly fight our way through the powerful, lapping arms of the snow, the tortured screams of the wind, and the endless damnation of the wild._

_*******_

After a time boundlessly unfolding over what seems now to have been a limitless stretch of infinities, we come across a curious structure. 

It might once have been a recreation building or ranch—however, given its current state, it’s hard to tell. Beyond the fire and elemental damage, the edifice had since clearly fallen into disrepair, even prior to whatever happened to leave it hanging in smoke-blackened, crumbling shambles that trail down the hillside like a smattering of forgotten fragments. If I had to peg a guess, it was an explosion, or a series of them. I frown, wondering at what happened here.

Odds are, it’s been looted, but still—it’s a building, and buildings mean a better chance at supplies. Given that so much of the structure is in an unsound pile of sharp, ice-dusted bricks and weak, frozen planks of splintered wood, and it’s situated on the crest of a staircase steep, rocky hill that overlooks the wild, rushing Pigeon River, I’m not even immediately certain of how we can all safely enter the place. 

“Conner, here, take the weapons belt,” I tell him, opting to find a way in myself. “You remember how to use everything?”

“Yeah,” he says confidently, accepting the utility belt as I hand it to him. “Smoke for when I need to run, gas for when I’m surrounded, flash for when I have a few more than I can handle.”

“Well done, Grasshopper,” I say. “Batarangs for long-range disabling—you can use any of the ones you feel like, any of them will get the job done.”

“Bolas for if I need to restrain somebody. Um… Are you keeping the Escrima?”

“Probably should, just in case. And the grappling hook, come to think of it. If you need to, use your magic, okay?”

He nods. “Fire’s kind of my way to go beast mode. Oh—and veils up at all times.”

“Yep, veils are the ultimate left. Always keep that left and those veils up.”

“And don’t engage unless pre-planned or engaged first.”

I make the sign of the cross. “I think you are a Leaguer, my son.” 

He grins at me as he shoulders the belt.

“I’m going to head in,” I say. “You see that tree on the east end of the building there?” He nods. “Good. It should be an okay place to hang out until I’m done. There’s a lot of debris around the trunk, so find the best possible hiding place for you and Wolf that you can. Once I’m through in there, I’ll come turn you guys up—just sit tight and listen for the signal, _don’t_ come looking for me. If you see anyone, Marauders, enforcers, civilians, _anyone_ , like you said—do _not_ engage them. And don’t try to run right off. If they find you, send up one of the flares, do your best to up your veils, and just get out of there. Don’t actively try to fight them unless you absolutely can’t avoid it. I’ll come to you. Okay?”

“Got it, Dad.” He pauses, and chews at his lip. “Um… What if you don’t come back?”

I lean down a bit, so I’m eye level with him. I lay a hand on his shoulder. “You keep following the river. You remember Artemis and Kaldur from the video chats, right?”

He nods.

“You have that tracking device in your watch. It’ll also act like a distress beacon. Activate it like I showed you, and they’ll know you’re on your own and that they need to speed things up to come and get you. You might be alone for a time, so remember what you’ve learned out here. Any place you come to, you look for what you need that you can take. Scavenge, don’t steal.”

He nods. “I will. But… You’ll come back, right?”

I smile through the sinking feeling of dread in my chest. 

“Of course I will. It’s a promise,” I say, and squeeze his shoulder. “You keep hidden and listen for my signal, that whistle. Give me until dark.”

“Okay.” 

“Good boy,” I tell him. “Remember, veils and left up. Stay out of sight.”

We bump fists like dorks, and as he maneuvers the scattered debris strewn across the hillside in the direction of the enormous, gnarled old tree and squats down behind a slab of curled scaffolding, I make my way toward the building itself. 

Rounding the west end, there are almost no windows, save for a few clear up on the third story. I go around to the back—even less luck. The back half of the building is entirely collapsed atop the upper floors, making it impossible to get in through the top part safely. Peering through the windows, the lower floors are bursting and choked with debris, so crowded with fallen bits of wood, crumbled drywall, shattered wooden flooring, piled bricks, insulation, and upholstery that there’s no way in hell I’d be able to even worm my way a foot into the mess without triggering a massive cave-in. The east side of the edifice is even worse—not only is it piled to the gills with wreckage, it’s a mass of festered, rotted detritus, all of it decomposing even as I look through the jagged panes of broken glass. From what I can see, floors no longer remain on this side—all of them have given way beneath the collapsing upper levels. 

I circle back to the south end of the building and ready the grappling hook. Only one way in—a half-spat out window.

Letting the grappling hook fly, it connects with a chewed-up, brick windowsill at the topmost floor. I give it a tug, testing the sturdiness of the hold, and when I determine that the cord is anchored strongly enough to the sill that it will bear my weight without breaking through the building’s rotten siding to turn me into abstract art on the ground below, I disengage the mechanism that keeps it locked in place.

The strain of the grappling hook takes a toll on the casement, however, and even as I’m flung into the side of the building, the bricks surrounding the window dissolve into a sandy smattering of rocks, and I damn near slip from the sill to make the aforementioned Picasso painting atop the wreckage strewn across the grounds. By some God-given miracle that defies all the laws of physics and gravity and hell, _nature_ , I keep my grip on the crumbling windowsill, and haul myself up over the brick surface and into the building.

There isn’t much of a floor, much of it having moldered through with meandering growths of rank mildew that infest the wooden floorboards in a rash of bilious greenish-gray, the rest of it just plain not there. Holes yawn in the planks, black, abyssal maws agape in eternal, noiseless screams, their lips darkened with ash and burning. Granted, one of these same gaping openings will likely award me safer access to the floors below than rooting through the wreckage to find a flight of stairs. I attach the grappling hook to a twisted length of piping that juts tusk-like from an outcropping of dislodged concrete wall and check the stability, satisfied when the magnets embedded in the kaginawa hold tolerably enough. With that, I drop the rope through the hole that yields the clearest path below, and slide down its length to land on my feet in the pitchy darkness of the bottommost floor. 

By the lack of even the most infinitesimal speck of light in this part of the building, I’m in the section that I noted didn’t have windows from the outside. I yank the grappling hook free, keeping it handy, toggle the light attached to the strap of the backpack I carry, and then feel all of the breath give from my lungs and I almost land on my seat as I start and lose my footing on a limp bundle behind me.

The wash of illumination from the flashlight catches a scene envisaged only in some of my more lurid nightmares, one that I knew full-well was coming in my time, but, like so many other things, I was dumb enough to pray wouldn’t catch up to me, after all. 

Bodies—dozens of them, all resting upon moldy sleeping cots like little tiles, the majority of them largely skeletonized, a small few still slimy in places and glimmering stickily in the glow from the flashlight. All of them undersized, arrested in the phase of secondary ossification—children. 

Grimy, chewed-up blankets, disturbed by what pests remain, lie spread throughout the room, dust particles floating up from their surfaces to illumine in the beam toggled from the light on my pack. A shaft goes through my gut and into my heart as the light passes over the forms of stuffed animals and toys, the scattered piles of tattered children’s books. 

A thought I don’t want, an unbidden one, one that I don’t want to allow to play out to entirety on the superstitious possibility that its doing so would render it true, whispers into my mind like the insidious, persistent voice of a parasitic demon—

_All of these could be Conner’s things. He could just as easily be one of the bodies on these cots. And he might still be…_

I force that thought from my mind, where it travels into my throat to add to the swelling bulge there. I stand for a moment, overcome, crushed all at once beneath the weight of this particular world. 

Slowly, I collect myself, and turn to make my way from the terrible scene. 

Traversing the building is slow-going, with the unstable, festering flooring threatening to give way beneath my feet with each step, the immense piles of indeterminate rubble that obstruct each room and doorway—the remnants of so many forgotten lives, all snuffed out and wiped from the books for God knows why. 

I come to a section of the building that might have been a cafeteria once, evidenced by the melted, congealed remains of plastic chairs and the twisted scraps of metal that might have been table legs. The floor is smirched with gray smudging, but except for the scattered slag and debris, spreads relatively smooth. I breathe in, toss up a prayer. Hopefully no Marauders or looters have come through here—unplundered cafeterias mean _good_ supplies. 

I locate what appears to have once been the buffet stand, now burned into a black, ashen shell. What might have been the kitchen—and with any stroke of luck, the pantry—lies beyond. 

I venture into the heaped wreckage, digging into the dusty, crumbling remains of siding, boxes, drywall, fractured woodwork, insulation, and other unrecognizable bits and pieces of building and who-knows-what, heartened when I find scraps of wrapping and plastic that may have held food. I keep on digging, searching, looking, on my hands and knees at times, hauling pieces of inland flotsam and jetsam at times as big as trash barrels away from walls, flooring, doorways, until my back aches, my gloves are torn and my hands bleeding, my knees numb and cracking with each movement, my thighs shaking from going from a squat to a standing position with so much constancy. Every possible locale in this room yields nothing—husks of closets are picked bare, shelves the same, clearly already pillaged. 

I shift into the next room to repeat the cycle, and onto the next, and still the next. I’m sweating by now, heavily respiring through the scarf tied over my face, and about spent of what little strength remains in my weakening, starving body. I fall onto the seat of my jeans, catching my breath, my heart sinking, dispirited. 

Finally, I stand, and turn up a room that, from what I can see, was a nursery once, considering the remnants of more toys, shredded blankets, ragged, filthy plushes. A broken, jagged window looks out over the same tree I told Conner to hide by, the skeletons of two wooden cribs lined up against the same wall. A closet stands in the corner, the singed half of its door hanging from the hinges. It looks empty, the half-light of the window shining into its dusty confines and damning it as a dead end, but I maneuver the ankle deep rubbish to its entry. Better to be safe than sorry. 

There’s a mound of ash and splintered wood the consistency of damp tinder atop the floor. I dig into it with some determination, the black sleeves of my coat and gloves staining a deeper, muddy gray beneath the moist, silty scree, and unearth the solid surface of a wooden floor. I focus my light on it, and, with a prickle of interest, make note of an interference in the laying of the wood. 

I press my fingers into the misaligned boards, and hold my breath when it pulls up beneath my grip. I yank the boards away, and discover what appears to be an entry into a crawlspace.

More interested still, I lower myself into the tiny opening, and hunker down to wriggle into the confines of this newly discovered, minikin room, and plow over its dreggy, scummy floor in a battle crawl until I come to a trapdoor. 

By now, I’m _really_ interested. 

I haul the trapdoor open, careful not to disturb the already unsound flooring, and, shining my light down into what it previously had hidden, I feel my heart damn near stop.

Food.

Supplies.

Sundries.

And tons of it.

I might cry at the sight.

 _Clever girl,_ I think to myself in Muldoon’s voice, a shout-out to whoever devised this inspired hiding spot. I lower myself into the small space, and, my heart thumping with excitement, I investigate the abundance I’ve just found.

Everything appears to be on the up-and-up, all of it sealed, none of it tampered with. Myriad canned goods—plenty of meats among them—are interspersed between mason jars filled with a variety of fruits, veggies, and sauces, all perched amid boxes of crackers, flatbreads, cookies, pastas—my eyes about pop from my skull at the sheer _multiplicity_ of it all. I haven’t seen such a diversity of food in well over a decade. Rations doled out to Gotham were generally dull and uninventive—cooking bases like flour, bulk tallow, and some crappy leavening agent, then some freeze-dried produce packets that needed reconstituted in boiled water, nuts, and finally grains like corn or oatmeal and bulgur. Once in a while they’d provide dehydrated or canned meats—a big freaking to-do, since these were forked over rarely, more like next to never—and, even more rarely, the occasional super-indulgence, like a box of chocolate bars or other sweets. 

Aside from the food, there are things like toothpaste, soap, antiperspirant, shampoo, razors, shaving cream, and a plethora of medicine the likes of which I haven’t seen since the days of the fully stocked Bat Cave. 

Rather than just indiscriminately dump as many armloads as I can into the packs that I reserve for food and meds, I quell my excitement and sift carefully through the bounty, picking and choosing based on our needs and on the nutrition content of each item, loading up both bags until I know that to carry them over miles of endless wilderness will be a labor better bestowed on Hercules. Then I go through the medicine, my eagerness amplified upon finding such boons as hardcore prescription-strength antibiotics, bottles of ibuprofen, acetaminophen, aspirin, and naproxen, burn ointment, antihistamines, cough syrup, hydrogen peroxide, even witch hazel. I take some of everything, and then add to what little hygienic tools we have inside the backpack in the forms of a few tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes, containers of deodorant, soap bars, shampoo bottles, a large handful of razors, and some packages of paper goods. For Conner, I nab a couple of blank notebooks, pencils, and paperbacks that seem like they’d interest him.

Satisfactorily stocked, and still somewhat in the dark about this tremendous fortune, I make my way out of the secret room—hampered now by the burgeoning sacks of wealth—giddy and anxious to share with Conner our newfound prize. Rather than disturb the rest of the ramshackle building, I opt to risk the nursery’s broken, caved in window to take my at this point _very_ overdue leave. 

As I wade through the endless rubble that litters the rickety flooring, something catches my eye.

A ledger, big and tatty, the leather of its binding chewed-up and only just in one piece, lodged beneath a pile of boards under a crib. 

I pause, and, on a powerful impulse after a moment of deliberation, approach the binder, and lift it from beneath the overlay of debris in a cloud of dust. It looks like a logbook, although I can’t be sure just from studying the outside. Although it feels a little like an intrusion—and one that will thoroughly dispel any sort of justification I previously felt in traipsing through this place and looting it for all it was worth—I open it.

The log apparently belonged to a David Cornwell—a name I recognize as that of a former cop and later the tactician of the Purge group that had shrouded itself in so much mystery for so long. My curiosity amply piqued, I flip through the dampened, dog-eared pages of the logbook, seeking the answers I had over the last several years failed to attain. 

There are inventory sheets, task lists, supply budgets, and mission statements (none of which were, in fact, mysteries—this group was very free about sharing their intentions on their website.) I leaf my way through the pages, only skimming their contents. However, when I get to the printouts of incident reports— _those_ get my attention. There are hundreds of them, far too many to look through in one sitting, so I thumb through them, reading a page here and there.

_Report filed: Cornwell_

_Date: October 23 rd, 2026_

_Time: 10:17AM_

_Subject: Incident Report, Supply Run_

_Just before dark yesterday the group finally returned from their supply run. We had sent a party of fourteen to the town about a hundred clicks east back in June. After this much time with no word from them, I’d gotten one group together to form a search-and-rescue party, and sent out another group to investigate the city again. It was my hope they could turn up even the smallest bag of supplies._

_We’ve needed so much. The kids and our older members especially suffer. This last year has been very trying._

_I’d almost given up hope. To see the group return after all this time, I thought I was seeing ghosts._

_It took a second in the wake of the shock I felt upon their return to see that their numbers were cut by half, and still another second that their aggregate included the search-and-rescue party I’d sent out._

_Taking a report from Grady, whom I’d enlisted as leader of the first group, I learned that they were set upon by Marauders as they reached their destination._

_He went into some detail about what they endured, but I know he’s holding back a good deal of what truly happened to him and his group. That even one person survived at the hands of those animals is nothing short of a miracle. The Marauders can hardly be called human. They were inhuman before the Month of the Devil, and they’ve only become more bestial and cruel since their being handpicked by Savage to do his darkest bidding. Scum, all of them. The ones that follow us are led by a man calling himself Chiron—but I know who he really is, who his goons are. I dealt with his lot more times than I could count in my days as Denver’s Chief of Police. That bastard and his morally destitute gang of biker trash. I can’t even bring myself to write his name. It still boils in my gut. I’ve met plenty of bikers in gangs that were wonderful people—pacifist, charitable, family men. This gang has always been anything but. That my supply run group saw even a single survivor all came down to sheer, dumb luck—one of their captors’ guns backfired, giving Grady just enough of a chance to fight back. And with his special ops background, he caused enough commotion that he, Briggs, and Miles were able to get away—although at a heavy cost._

_We owe them so much. In spite of the horror, loss, and trauma they went through, they continued into the town, and have returned with more supplies than we could possibly dream of—including an operative vehicle, medicine, food, office supplies, two generators, gasoline, weapons, toiletries, books, movies, computer parts, and even toys for the children._

_Our prayers all go up for our group still out there, and our hearts go out to all of our own in the wake of our dearly departed._

_Graeter: 1990-2026_

_Bindi: 1987-2026_

_Van Zandt: 1998-2026_

_Murphy: 1971-2026_

_Schreiv: 2003-2026_

I pause in reading, and light on something. 

I had, of course, researched the Marauders myself; however, to little avail. I always felt that I grasped at straws that, although visible, were only _just_ out of my reach—and if I could just _touch_ them, I would have the answers I desired. Bruce often mentioned the same thing—that he felt that he had the key, but that it went to none of the locks in his possession. However, one line from this log entry threads itself through all of the facts that I had turned up, forming a tie, or a web of sorts. 

_That bastard and his morally destitute gang of biker trash._

That I hadn’t made the connection earlier incenses me—did I suffer so much “Dad Brain” that I truly missed it, even for so doggedly sifting through piles of research?

Of course biker gangs like the ironically named Black Horsemen, and others, had come up a time or two when I pored over what information I had been able to turn up, but the closest connection that I had drawn had been that maybe a handful of Marauders were, once upon a time, Black Horsemen or members of some other notoriously violent gang. I was uncertain of which members had made the cut into the Marauders, and considering that Bruce and I both felt that each group of Marauders consisted of a mixed breed of miscreant, we had focused harder on which members might have been hardcore, high-level hit men in their former lives, to the mafia or so on—i.e. subtle hunters and precision killers. An upfront brawl we were always ready to tackle, however little warning we might have had—but a vampiric hit from the shadows required due diligence.

It never occurred to me, or to Bruce, that the Marauders might have been, in fact, unified gangs—never depleted, never dispersed, as previously believed; merely renamed and relocated. 

Other disreputable gangs had come to the fore while I’d read up on the Light’s interest in the Black Horsemen in the years preceding—each one dripping with more notoriety than the next, Royal Flush, Fearsome Five, Hangmen, along with infamous civilian gangs—and as I stand, holding the heavy ledger, poring over its contents, I realize that maybe the Marauders, all of them in separate, tight-knit groups that roam different areas of the country, are, indeed, likely these same gangs, none of their members redistributed. As of now, though, I’m not certain of which gang pursues my son and me. 

I continue to flip through the sheets in the ledger, and come across the final page.

_Report Filed: Turpin_

_Date: February 14 th, 2027_

_Time: 11:34 PM_

_Subject: The End_

_This is the end. Beautiful friend. This is the end. My only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end. No safety or surprise, the end. I’ll never look into your eyes, again._

_I’m sitting with my headphones in. There’s no point in doing anything else._

_I’m out of rounds. I have no other ammunition. I’ve used everything. Happy fucking Valentine’s Day._

_They’re here, in the compound. The Marauders. With their Hounds and hundreds of goddamn enforcers and even Savage and his people. We’re done for._

_This is the end._

_Sawyer took the children into the gym. She fed them some line about this being a safety drill for the troops. Who knows if they believed her, but the kids really seem to regard her as God. She gave them all a sedative cocktail in warm milk, read them a story, and waited until they were all asleep. Then she went through, one by one, with that serum and that syringe, applying the shots to ensure they’d never wake up._

_It’s better this way. The Marauders do ungodly things to children._

_They didn’t suffer._

_She came out of the gym as our posts were being reassigned, guilt written all over her face, her shotgun over her shoulder, and gave her report. Then, she launched with the rest of us into her doom._

_I’m a sniper. I take the bastards out with precision shots. Now I’m out of ammo, I’ve got nothing. The stairway to the nursery is a deathtrap. I have no repelling gear. I could do a kamikaze dive to the ground through the window, but damn it, I’m not taking that way out._

_Can you picture what we’ll be, so limitless and free, desperately in need, of some stranger’s hand, in a desperate land._

_They’re_

The words stop here.

I stand, my heart all at once anvil heavy, my throat swelling, now home to something hard and globular. 

All those little bodies, lined up along the walls atop their cots, as though they were attendees of nothing more than a lock-in at a school. I fight the image, I wrestle with it—damn it, I don’t want it—but it plays out in my mind’s eye, all the same. 

The kids, all cuddled on their mats, with their little securities and blankets. The woman, this Sawyer, offering them their spiked hot toddies, the youngsters accepting them from her with the love and trust that only a child can show. Reading to them, I don’t know what book. Maybe _Where the Wild Things Are._ Singing. Waiting for the heavy, steady breathing, the sounds of sleep. Approaching each child, kissing them all a final goodnight, putting each down beneath a slumber that would never end.I shut my eyes, all at once gone numb, my throat closing around the mass inside it, my chest lacing tight, strangulating, choking me. 

This world. The things that happen in it. How the hell anyone can say God still loves this wretched place—

_They didn’t suffer—_

_—_ It’s incogitable. 

I just don’t know.

I squeeze the ledger into the pack. Its info, already useful, may come in even greater handy.

Setting the grappling hook in place on the brick windowsill, I test the hold, squeeze through the space in the casement, and painstakingly repel down the side of the building, taking it as carefully and slowly as I possibly can, landing eventually on the ground at the north end. I keep as much as I can to the cover of the rubble and shadows as I make my around to the east end of the building to retrieve Conner from his hiding place. 

Suddenly, I hear a whistling sound—our alert signal. It’s soft, barely perceptible, but I catch the sound. Ducking down, I move swiftly across the remaining stretch of debris and snow, and when I kneel down by the scaffolding, Conner and Wolf appear as the boy lowers the veil.

“What is it,” I whisper.

“There,” he murmurs, pointing down the hill to the north, and handing the Wayne Tech binoculars from the belt to me.

I peer through them, and catch my breath.

“Disaster. Heavy on the dis—I thought we were behind them now,” I hiss, watching the group of men—maybe fifteen of them to my estimate—as they meander through the sparse woodlands a ways beyond the base of the hill, far too close for comfort. “Unless this is a different group…”

“You think they split up?” Conner asks. “Like some of them back-tracked and tried to pen us in?”

“It’s possible,” I tell him. “Good pick-up.” 

He beams nervously at me. “Thanks.”

“Could also be that they got held up for some reason and we ended up getting ahead of them again… Either way, we’re going to need to get across the river,” I tell him. “I don’t know how we’re going to do that, but we’d better figure it out, and PDQ. The water will buy us some protection, at least.” I shift the packs of food and medicine on my hips. The bags are so heavy the belt is coming loose. I tighten the buckle. “Come on, let’s get moving. Got that Zatara specialty handy, kiddo?”

He smiles, and speaks the incantation to render us entirely invisible, even to the most dedicated onlooker. Still, I make note of the where the shadows lie on this side of the river. In this realm of magic, odds are he will surpass his mother; however, he’s young yet, and lacks the experience and stamina to hold sustained spells, like veils. We make our way down the craggy, rambling hill, toward the rushing water below, keeping to the cover of the scattered rubble and patches of darkness. 

There is hardly a shoreline here, only a thin swath of toothy, lapidarian rocks that spill into the river, which churns its frantic path alongside this precarious, uneven thread. I hold onto Conner’s arm as we pick our way over the stones, even our acrobat’s balance tested by this challenging ground.

The Hounds surely have our scent now, so although our passage is hard-going with shaky, dubious steps, I hurry us along, wobbling alongside the strident water, as the day wanes into the diffuse twilight. By the time the sky has begun to darken overhead, we come across the incomprehensible fortune of the rambling remains of a wooden bridge, somehow still holding its shape within the wildly charging waters. 

It will be hard to cross, but easy to destroy—and according to the map on my holographic computer, the nearest bridges, if any of them still stand, are too far off in either direction to be concerned about. 

Time to work. 

I pull a length of rope from my utility belt that Conner still carries slung over his shoulder, wrap the line around his waist and then mine, and secure the knot between us. I check the length—about twenty feet of rope between us. I coil it loosely around one hand. I wish to _God_ we had rebreathers, but mine was stolen along with my old Nightwing utility belt when I was shot all those years ago, and that tool hasn’t exactly been in broad supply since. 

Them’s the breaks. We’ll just have to do without one. I produce one of the retractable blades from a holster in the belt, and give it to Conner.

“Okay,” I tell him. “Go ahead and take the veils down. You may end up needing all your strength for this. Stay behind me, but close—like right on my heels close—and let me test the bridge before we move. If you go in, don’t panic, okay? I can draw you back by the line, and if I fall in with you, it’ll keep me from losing you in the water.”

“I won’t panic,” he says. “You’ve shown me how to swim, you know.”

“Still water is an entirely different beast than that river, Conner,” I tell him. “But good. Don’t panic.”

He grins. “No panic. I promise.”

“Right on. Stay whelmed. Now listen, if _I_ go in, you cut this line before it goes taut—like Grandpa showed you, or you’ll be coming in with me.”

Conner takes this in, and then vehemently shakes his head. “No way, Dad, I can’t do that—”

“If I go in, there’s no way in hell you’ll be able to hold onto me, and with the speed of that current and all this water around, it’s going to be a lot more challenging to use your magic to pull me out. You _need_ to cut the line. Okay?”

“Dad, you just _said_ if I fall in, and you fall in, too—”

“It’s one thing if you’re already in the water—I’d just rather you not go in if we can avoid it. So if I go in first, cut the rope.”

“Dad—”

“I’ll be fine, Conner,” I say. “Okay? I promise. Just get to the shore, find somewhere out of sight, and wait for me. I’ll find you.”

“What if you’re not okay?”

“Same plan—activate that signal, keep Wolf close, and stick to the river. Kaldur and Artemis will find you.”

“What about Wolf?”

“He’s too heavy—if I tie him to us, he’ll pull us both under if he goes in.” Wolf, to my gratitude, chuffs his apparent agreement, and nuzzles Conner’s hand. 

“But what if he _does_ go in?”

“He’s a good swimmer, he’ll be okay. If not, we’ll find a way to pull him out, I promise.”

Conner lays a hand on Wolf’s head, and nods. “…Okay.”

“All right, you ready?”

“I guess so,” he says, looking with trepidation at the swirling water.

I take the first step onto the groaning bridge, slowly easing my weight onto the slick, bowing, wooden boards, and continue in this way, gingerly testing each footfall, like an adventurer on the uncertain ice in the Arctic. The water churns beneath us, splashing over the railing, buffeting us with frigid, soaking blasts. The wind howls around us, exacerbating the spray. In short time, the snow comes in sharp like bullets, spattering painfully against our exposed eyes and foreheads. The boards of the bridge protest with increasing timbre with every step I take forward, until my jaw strains with my gritted teeth and every muscle in my back is laced up tightly around my spine. 

I step atop a board, test it, then, satisfied when it holds beneath my weight, move forward, and lose my breath as the world falls away beneath me, swallowed by a flash of white and a roaring din.

A lasso crunches my thigh, a stampede yanks my leg away, and I go to my back in an outburst of air and bubbles. Through the leaping foam of the river, I realize my leg went through the same board that I thought was safe, and the force of the current beneath has swiped me down, eating away the boards around me in floundering splinters. The wood beneath me is gone, half of the bridge now sinking into the river—all that is bracing me now is the standing railing, which is rapidly fragmenting under the heft of my body and the pounding water. My son stands on the undamaged part of the bridge, gripping the line, his body bent at the waist beneath the power of the river.

“Conner—” I bellow through the wind and water, fighting fruitlessly against the overpowering waves, “cut the line, _now—”_

My words are engulfed by a blast of water that shoves my body through the railing like a cannonball. I’m in the current now, trapped in the frantically twisting tides and eddies, pinballing through the water like a wooden toy. I smack against rocks, roots, trunks. I remember being told by river guides on kayaking trips once upon a time to go with the current feet-first—except I can’t _get_ feet-first, hurled into somersaults as I am and entirely at the water’s mercy. There’s a sense of falling, and all at once, I quit swirling, entwined now in something under the water. 

I can’t tell what’s holding me, but it snares me, whatever it is, about my legs and hips, grasping me jealously against the raging of the torrent. My lungs heave in my chest, roving desperately for breath, and my muscles weaken with every stroke I attempt to take within the whirling tide and against whatever it is that holds me by the middle. I reach down, fighting to free myself, and discover that the packs about my waist are tangled in some unidentified, clawing, snarled metal. My leg is snagged on the same surface, and with some tugging, it comes free, although the packs remain lodged. Even as I’m hauled and jounced by the water, I yank frenziedly at the bags. They hold fast, and finally, my awareness tapering and the blackness of the water darkening more still, I undo the buckle of the tether that holds them to my waist. 

I cartwheel through the water, crashing against the obstacles of the riverbed, cracking my skull against some severe surface—

Suddenly, I’m staring up at the sky, which hovers disinterested overhead, turning a slow, repeated, lazy circle with the trees around me. My body lies half-immersed in the chattering river water at a black, gravelly embankment. A shuddering pain javelins through my temples, spreading down to my neck and shoulders. I gag, cough, spit up a spout of filmy water. From what I can tell, I was finally expectorated from the current like an unsavory mouthful onto the shoreline I lie on now. I shuffle an arm, rise up onto my elbows.

“Dad!”

I hear Conner’s voice, a little ways off, but distinctly his, and the sound of footfalls, his and Wolf’s, rushing over the rot of the undergrowth beneath the trees. 

“Dad, are you okay?”

I draw myself up, my movements sluggish and stunted, slowly regaining awareness as my head gradually clears. I’m aware of pain in my chest wall, left knee and elbow, and my right shoulder—although these aches pale in comparison to the furious throbbing in my head. I lift a hand to my hairline, furrowing my brow, waiting for the pounding to dissipate. My scarf dangles soaked and tattered around my chest. I jarringly recall that I lost the packs of food and medicine. 

I almost can’t bring myself to look at Conner and Wolf as they come up to me, both of them sopping, my son blue-lipped and chattering, his scarf hanging loose and forgotten about his neck. There’s frost in his eyelashes and dusted over his brows, I notice, and icicles forming in his hair beneath his hood. 

Damn it.

I pull myself up, my limbs moving in floppy, clumsy motions like they’ve been fitted with oversized flippers, and, shaking convulsively, my arms tingling and my hands gone to unfeeling bricks, I catch the boy in a dripping wet hug through our weighted, rapidly freezing clothes. 

“I said I’d find you. You okay?” I stutter, my voice juddering in spurts. I back away, and leave a hand on his shoulder. I lay my free palm on Wolf’s broad, watery head.

“I know, I’m sorry. We’re fine,” Conner says, chattering, his body shivering under my touch. “We didn’t go in all the way.”

“You cut the line,” I observe. 

He nods, staring unhappily at the ground. “…Yeah. I’m sorry, Dad.”

“No, no. You did the right thing. Good work.”

“Dad, I…” He looks up at me, his face miserable, full of a thousand unspoken apologies, eyes bright with fear. “I lost hold of the utility belt.”

I absorb the bulk of this news, the silence between us spreading as I do, devouring the noisy babble of the river, the lamenting of the wind.

I reach over, and grasp Conner close. Right now, I couldn’t give a beggar’s fuck about the belt. 

We still have the Escrima, which are attached to holsters on my coat, and the grappling hook, connected to a loop on my backpack. There is that small blessing. 

And that’s not even the kicker, here—my son is alive and really by the grace of God, a point driven home when I glance at the murderous, hungry water. Yeah. I’ll take the kid in lieu of the belt, please, thank you, and bye. 

However, as I straighten, and my enormous relief gives way under the sharp, bitter snap of reality, it’s difficult _not_ to want to throw a rock at the stupid river on the unhinged hope that said rock would actually hurt it. There were _so_ many tools in that belt other than just weapons that we’ve depended on up until now—blades, binoculars, night vision tools, lock picks. 

_Damn_.

“…What happened?” I ask, swallowing the mouthful of unease. Nothing to be done for it now, unless I want to chance going into the river again to look for it. (And I don’t.)

“I fell part of the way in after I cut the rope,” he says, tears forming in his eyes. “I caught the railing and I was trying to pull myself back up on the bridge, and the belt just—it just—”

“Came loose in the current?”

He nods, and his chin quivers. Just like that, he’s crying.

“It wasn’t buckled. I’m so sorry, Dad.”

I shake my head, and, again, reach over, wrapping my arms around his shivering form. 

“It’s okay,” I murmur. When he continues to sob into my shoulder, I hold him more tightly. “It’s okay,” I repeat, concealing my own discouragement at our incredible misfortune and the implications of it, as I remember my own tremendous loss to the river. Water, ten thousand, Dick and Co., negative twelve. “Conner, it’s fine. You’re alive. You didn’t go in. It could’ve been _so_ much worse. And we still have the Escrima and grappling hook. Okay? It’s all right.” 

He nods, drags a hand under his nose. 

“How’d you end up not going all the way in?” I ask.

“Wolf jumped across the hole in the bridge and pulled me out.”

I release my son, and kneel down to catch Wolf about his enormous shoulders. I rub his wet fur, kiss the spot between his ears, past any effective expression of gratitude.

“Good job, Lassie,” I say into the thick, wet cotton of his fur, holding his face in my hands. “Thank you.”

He licks my cheek, and I smile.

“Well… that makes two of us,” I say, sobering, and getting back to my feet. I pass a hand over my damp face, frostlets already forming on my cheeks and lashes. “I lost both packs of food I found. And the medicine.”

Conner stares at me in silence, apparently torn between relief at not being the only fuck-up in this equation, and the sinking realization that now, we have nothing to eat—and there’s nothing on the horizon.

“…At least we still have the backpack,” I say, heaving a shuddering sigh. I shrug blithely out of my sopping coat and sweater. I _can’t_ show my own apprehensions to my son. “Still have that. We’ll find something tomorrow. Come on, shake a leg, we’d better hurry up and destroy that bridge before the Marauders get to it.”

“Umm… I don’t think we have to,” Conner tells me. “It all went underwater right after I got off of it.” 

I could _sob_ with relief. Without the tools inside the utility belt, destroying the bridge would be a damned labor and a half. “Well, at least fortune favored us there today. Better not push Lady Luck, though—you need to get out of that jacket, and yesterday. You’re soaked to the bone, kiddo.”

“Okay,” Conner says, and lobs away his wet coat.

“God, it’s fuckin’ freezing,” I mutter to myself under my breath. 

“I know,” my son mumbles. “I can’t feel my arms.”

I give him a chagrined look. “Oh… you heard that, huh?”

He nods. 

“Yeah… don’t repeat that,” I tell him. “Come on, let’s get this camp set up before we turn into a couple of ice sculptures.” I’m stuttering with cold, but I valiantly continue to don a façade of good spirits. “Last I checked, no one’s getting married in this place.”

Conner wipes his eyes, and looks at me quizzically through his chattering teeth.

“People—” I take a breath through my own shivering, “—used to have ice sculptures at weddings. I mean, not everyone did, but it was a pretty common decorative tradition.”

The boy wraps his arms around himself, bouncing on his toes. “What kind of sculptures did they have?” 

“Oh, just depended on what the couple wanted,” I explain, pulling the tarp from the backpack with numb, fat, tingling fingers, my vision tunneling for a moment. I blink repeatedly, and breathe into my folded, unfeeling hands. “Swans, their initials. My friends Mal and Karen had a heart with an infinity symbol.”

“Who are Mal and Karen?” Conner shuffles over, and helps me unfold the tarp, our motions slowing with each passing moment. Wolf busies himself drying out his coat against the tree trunks.

It’s difficult to speak, but necessary if we’re going to hang in there long enough to make camp. 

“Guardian and Bumblebee,” I say unsteadily. “You’ll actually be meeting them soon—they’re where we’re going.”

“Mom… told me about Sphere. Will she be there?”

I shake my head. “She’s on New Genesis for now. She might come back, she might not. The enemy wants her really bad. It’ll be safer for her there, at least for the time being.”

“What about where we’re going?”

“It’s safe,” I assure him, securing the tarp against the ground as Conner anchors it, and then I connect the other end of the length to a nearby tree. “Definitely safer than here, and we’ve been okay so far, right?”

Conner doesn’t reply for a moment. I don’t press him on that—I’ll concede that our “okay” status is up for debate. 

However, I _do_ tell him, “Keep talking, kiddo—keep that blood flowing until we get this done.”

He nods, his shoulders hunched about his ears. “Um… Are there other kids there?”

“Yeah, actually. My friend Raquel has a boy a little older than you,” I tell him, my words hardly articulate through my numb lips. 

“How old is he?”

“Fourteen,” I reply, now laying the other, lighter tarp across the ground, and some of our damp blankets out over it, leaving room for the fire pit. “Okay, let’s get the fire going.” 

“I don’t… know if we should, Dad.”

“We have to or we’ll freeze,” I state plainly. “Want to help me out?”

“No, Dad—I mean… it might not be safe.”

I frown up at him.

“Why do you say that?” I ask, trying with a colossal effort not to sound cross. All I’ve been holding out for since I got shot out of the water is the fire.

“Those men… Um… they were far away, but I could see them without binoculars across the river. And, uh… I know the river’s between us and them, but I thought you didn’t want them to find us, or see us.”

“…Shit,” I mutter, defeated. I sit down, rip off the remainder of my wet clothing, and yank an armful of blankets from the backpack over my damp, bare shoulders. “Don’t repeat that, either. Hurry up and get the rest of those wet clothes off and get under some blankets with Wolf and me. Stat, before you go ice statue on us.”

He does as I ask, and then curls up under a knitted blanket. He sits his shaking form beside me. The throws are a bit dampened, but not terribly so—the backpack is effectively water resistant enough that our goods aren’t drenched in spite of the dip in the river. Wolf lies down at our backs, as always allowing us to leech the warmth from his body.

“Can you veil the fire?” I ask Conner as a last-ditch Hail Mary, and then immediately kick myself, knowing damn well that I’m asking way too much of him. Magic isn’t merely strenuous physical exercise, and it isn’t just advanced calculus, either—it’s physically _and_ cerebrally draining. Zatanna often would pass out for hours landing in the double digits after particularly arduous battles, and Conner—a child—has been tossing veils around like magical confetti all day. 

I’m about to tell him never mind, when he says, “…I’m tired, Dad. And cold. And I’m _really_ hungry. I don’t know if I can make any veils right now.”

“Well, it’s no big deal,” I say lightly. “We have the blankets and clothes.”

“I hope they’re enough.”

“…Come here,” I tell him gently, wishing I hadn’t placed so much burden on him, hating myself for it. We wrap up under the blankets, him burrowing into my chest, my arms locked around him, Wolf lying with us, both of us shaking under the damp pile of knitted and fleece throws. “I shouldn’t have asked, kiddo. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, too.”

The snow begins to fall, twirling from the sky in white, dancing swirls, rapidly collecting on the ground at the edge of the tarp. 

“I got you some books and sketchbooks, by the way,” I mention. “Didn’t lose those, at least. They’re in the backpack.”

“Oh, thanks,” he replies, brightening a little. “Can we read tomorrow night?”

“Sure.”

There’s silence for a little while, as the snow falls, and our shivering slows. 

“Dad,” Conner murmurs.

“Hmm.”

“I’m so sorry I cut the line.”

I shake my head. “Don’t, Conner. You did the right thing.”

“…It didn’t feel like the right thing.”

“I know,” I say, laying my hand on his hair. “But it’s what saved my life, and yours. We’d both probably have drowned if you hadn’t.”

“But maybe we wouldn’t have,” Conner says. “Maybe we’d have both gotten out of the water with the packs and the belt.”

“…Maybe,” I say with a sigh. “Maybe not. Maybe we’d find a portal underwater and emerge from it in Mordor. Then we’d _really_ have problems.”

Conner chuckles a little, and, heartened, I squeeze a handful of his wet hair. “Listen, kiddo. Either way… It doesn’t matter now. We’re alive, and we’re okay. You can’t think like that—dwelling on the ‘what if’ stuff, I mean. That’ll drive you crazy before anything else will. We’re still here, we still have each other, and I promise, we _will_ find food. That’s what we should be focusing on. The good. There’s no sense worrying about a bunch of what-ifs. Okay?”

He nods, and nestles in closer to me. “Okay.” I hear his stomach rumbling over the keening of the wind. “…Will there be food where we’re going?”

“As far as I know,” I say.

“I’m hungry.”

“I know.” 

God, I am, too. I remember unbuckling the strap, loosening myself from the packs. Trading life for living. I grit my teeth, wishing I could go back into the river for them, knowing damn well I can’t. All that food, all that medicine. I had it in my goddamn hands. All of it, I _held_. Only to lose it. And in this hellhole, more so even than food, medicine is like fucking _gold_.

I _don’t_ want to showcase my own fear and growing despair to my son, especially not now, but I can’t stop myself saying, “Conner, I am _so_ sorry. I found a _treasure_ trove of food in there… and I lost it.” I huff, and shake my head. With a strain of will, I pull myself together. “We’ll find something tomorrow, though. Promise.”

“…Well, I lost the belt. Pretty sure we won’t find something like that.”

“It’s okay, kiddo,” I say. “It’s not that important. We’ve still got our fists, right? And the Escrima… and the grappling hook…”

“And my magic,” he cedes, and then sighs. “…Today was just a _really_ bad day.”

I tighten my arms around him. “Get some sleep, kiddo. We'll feel the aster soon, I promise. Tomorrow will be better.” 

I don’t sleep at all, haunted by the nightmarish effigies of all those little undersized bodies lined up entombed upon their mats, the tragic final scroll of Cornwell’s ledger, the frailty of our present safety with our enemies hot on our heels, the brobdingnagian blows we’ve suffered today. And… the dogging thoughts of old world luxuries, hot baths, soft beds, central heating, inviting fireplaces. Warm, white bread and melting butter, rich, bitter black coffee, sweet, bright red strawberries, sharp, vivid yellow cheese. My stomach rolls and twists, pleading with me to fill it, robbing my body of strength in retaliation with every passing second that I don’t. 

The boy doesn’t slumber much, either, as the evening disperses into night, the snow picking up into a raucous sleet that batters the tarp and dampens the biting air. The wind slices through the blankets, questing deeper, seeping through our skin, sinking into our bones. I wrap my arms tightly around my son, hearing him whimpering through the screaming wind, his body quivering against mine. 

“Tomorrow will be better,” I murmur to him. “Don’t lose heart. We’ll be okay.”


	7. Unless the Gods Delight in Tragedies

_Nights blurring together._

_Coming home exhausted from Hood work and remaining up for hours following, walking around the manor with my son until he fell asleep (which, with all frequency, often took all night.) Oftentimes in the Bat Cave, so Bruce and I could discuss work while I was “on duty.” Experiencing a profound delirium in the out-of-place-ness of carting around a squalling kid, bedecked in his stupid-cute little pajamas festooned with trucks, while we discussed the grittier parts of the job, bodies littering the streets, viruses morphing into full-blown epidemics, and conspiracy theories about where the missing metas were and what truly went on within Savage’s strange factories._

_“See?” I said in response to one of Bruce’s theories that seemed especially far-reaching, extending the screaming infant in his direction. “He disagrees.”_

_Bruce, unfazed, just continued talking to me, shifting the subject over to the Horsemen’s origins, Luthor’s intentions, the long-term implications of Savage’s control. I dropped way off mid-sentence, Conner gurgling in his sleep on my shoulder. I woke up to Bruce extending a cup of coffee._

_“You’ll probably be needing a lot more in the way of Instant Human nowadays,” he said._

_I laughed._

_Life almost normal._

*******

It was late, maybe half past one in the morning, when I finished up checking on the greenhouses that we’d set up in the Bat Cave with seeds we’d acquired from the black markets (so far, so good—we’d be contributing our own wares to the markets before long), and headed into the manor to relieve Zatanna from baby duty. I paused when I entered the room.

Conner, four months old, slept peacefully in his crib, with Wolf curled up at its foot. One Conner for another. Zatanna sat in the chair next to the crib, with a blanket over her lap, her knees folded and her fingers working in the corner of the throw. She’d rather enjoyed knitting, as she’d come to learn maybe halfway through her pregnancy; however, the project she’d worked on for a month or so sat in a pile next to her, discarded. She didn’t rise when I entered the room, just gave me half a smile, and seemed by and large troubled.

I approached them, and briefly laid a hand on the boy’s soft, warm belly, which rose and fell with his breathing. The customary involuntary smile crossed my face. I swear that kid has been my best pal since the second he was born. Generally speaking, to this day, you’re not going to see one of us without the other. I’ve often wondered if that will be different, should things change. I hope not.

Zatanna wordlessly watched, still sitting in her chair.

“Hey,” I said, keeping my voice low. I leaned against the wall that braced the head of the crib, with Wolf at my feet. I comfortably faced Zatanna in this position.

“Hi,” she replied, no longer watching me. Her voice sounded tired, artificial. “How was it?”

“It was,” I said, shrugging. “There doesn’t seem to be as much of a need to keep a low profile these days. The Regional guy isn’t a sympathizer, but he’s got a big family and they’re borderline starving. So… We’ve taken to leaving him some extras, just anonymously. Same with the enforcers, who, I think it’s safe to say, will shift their positions soon enough if all this keeps up.” I stretched a stiff muscle in my shoulder. “You know they’ll get shot on sight if they’re ever caught stealing food, just like everyone else, and a lot of them have happily risked that and taken to theft to survive. It’s hard for everyone anymore.”

Zatanna was quiet for a moment, staring at something I couldn’t see. 

“I never thought I would say this,” she said to break the silence, “and my dad would _kill_ me if he could hear me right now, but… I wish you wouldn’t.” She drew her knees up. “I really wish you wouldn’t.”

I figured this was what bothered her, and kept my tone even and my voice gentle. “It’ll be okay, Z,” I said, lapsing into the use of the first letter of her name, a sort of nickname habit I’ve adopted with my loved ones. “And you know… they’re people, too, and have their own families to care for. Not saying I’m about to accept any Bridge invitations from them—”

“Oh, Dick, I know. It’s not that.” 

I frowned, and waited.

“I would never ask you to give up heroism, you know that,” she said. “But… Sometimes it _really_ gets hard.” She fretted at the edges of the throw blanket. “Waiting for you to come home, I mean.” Her voice grew quiet. “Wondering if you will at all.”

I paused. “Oh…”

“Just…” She shook her head. “…I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you. Or Conner.”

I let that settle on the air as it sank in.

“Hey,” I said, finally. 

She looked up, and I extended both arms to her. She rose, the blanket dropping to the ground, and gratefully wrapped both arms around my midsection, resting her head on my chest. 

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. 

I squeezed a handful of her hair, and shook my head. “No, no. It’s okay.” 

“I’m such a terrible person,” she said suddenly.

I drew back a little, and stared at her. “…What?” 

“I am.”

“…Why would you say that?” I asked, resting one hand on the nape of her neck.

“Don’t,” she murmured, holding up a hand. “Please, just… hear me out. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“…I shouldn’t be the one here, Dick,” she said.

I inclined my head. “What do you mean?”

“This isn’t fair. It shouldn’t be me.”

When she didn’t go on, I pressed, “Okay, I repeat… what do you mean?”

She was silent. She leaned her head against my chest. 

“Zatanna?” I asked.

She abruptly pulled away, and drew Conner from where he slept, propping his slumbering form against her shoulder. He fidgeted, fussed a little, and settled down. She leaned her head against where his shoulder rested on hers, laying a hand on his back. She moved over to her chair, and sat down. 

“This,” she said. She gestured at the room. “All of this. It just… shouldn’t be mine. It _never_ should have been mine.”

“Zatanna—”

She looked over at me. “Dick, I mean it. It should have been Babs’.”

I gazed at her a moment, considering those words. 

“Is that what this is about?” I asked after a brief spell of quiet, again carefully measuring my tone. 

If Zatanna was feeling some insecurities over Barbara’s memory, I knew there was precious little I could say to set them at ease. And whatever I _could_ say—the fact was, no words could comfortably express to Zatanna that, whether I still grieved or didn’t, my heart was now wholly with her, and not with her predecessor. 

The truth was, and is—yes, I’ll always love Barbara. _Always._ I’ve missed her every damn day since she died. And if I said there were no times I wondered over how differently my life might have turned out had she survived, I’d be guilty of a barefaced lie. 

But—here’s the thing. It’s not like I can help how I feel about Babs. She was the woman I felt was that mystical puzzle piece I believed I needed to fill out the whole of my life—the one I was _so_ sure I would sit on the deck at the nursing home and bicker and ship all the young folks with after all of our teeth fell out and we started depending on a brand of undergarments of the same name. But the fact is that that, like so many other things, was all a dream that abruptly disintegrated—just a bit of smoke caught in a violent blast of wind. 

I thought about all of this as Zatanna sat with Conner, rocking him, holding him to her shoulder, her dark hair a glossy, waving black curtain over her opposite arm, her neck a white, graceful arch beneath her face. My heart warmed so intensely I felt it in my limbs. 

I grieved Barbara. I missed her. I still do.

But here’s the _real_ truth, the _big_ truth, and I knew it then, watching Zatanna rock our son—I’d accepted that Babs was gone. And, equally, I wouldn’t have changed a _single_ thing about how my life had turned out, if given the choice. I loved Zatanna and Conner—my little family—so fiercely in that moment I studied them that I damn near broke down in tears like a total sap. 

“So…” I said, inwardly pulling myself together when Zatanna didn’t speak first. “ _Is_ that what this is about?”

“Not just that,” she sighed. “…It should have been M’gann and Conner’s. Barbara’s. Artemis and Wally’s.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“Dick, are you happy?” she asked suddenly.

I shrugged. “Define happy?”

She sighed. “I’m serious.”

“…Why?”

She frowned, and resolutely refused to meet my gaze. “…I’ve wanted this for longer than I care to admit.” Again, she sighed. “A _lot_ longer.”

I was silent, giving her space and time to organize her thoughts and express them as she needed.

“Like I told you,” she continued somberly, “I never stopped loving you. And I know I passed it off, but… I _was_ pretty torn up over it when we stopped dating.”

“…Were you?” I said. Now _that_ much was a surprise to me. 

She nodded. “I was. Pretty bad for a while, too. But… Dick, I wanted you to be _happy._ I just wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to have the life that _you_ wanted. So… when you and Babs got together… I was happy enough.” An odd expression played with her lips—not quite a grimace, not quite a smile. “I always thought… as long as whoever you were with thought you singlehandedly hung the moon, I could be okay with it. And Babs just _adored_ you, whether she ever got all open and poetic about it or not. So… I was happy enough.” 

I gazed at her. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

She shook her head. “I knew how you felt, Dick. I knew I could never force you. And… again, you were _happy_ with Babs, so I…” She lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I had a few times when I’d kind of fantasize about us getting together if you and Barbara ever broke up…” she sighed miserably, “and then I’d feel so bad I’d go to Confession.”

I chuckled. “You didn’t have to feel bad, Zatanna.”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “I wanted what was someone else’s. It wasn’t right. And… the thing was, I really loved Babs, too. I couldn’t stand hurting her any more than I could stand hurting you. For as much as I wished for what was hers for _myself…_ I wanted to see you make it.”

I approached her chair, and laid a hand on her free shoulder, her hair soft under my palm. “What are you getting at, babe?” I asked gently.

“I ask if you’re happy, Dick… because _I_ am.”

I inclined my head. “…I get the feeling there’s more to this than just ‘you’re happy.’” 

“These last few months… with you, the baby, the others… I don’t know _how_ this can be true in any universe, Dick, but… they’ve been some of the happiest of my life.” She paused, rocking slowly with her foot. “All these things I wanted for so long, that I thought I’d never have. You. Conner. A family. And to kind of a be a nerd and quote Teddy Roosevelt here, ‘working hard at work worth doing.’ I’ve had, you know, _pieces_ of all this, throughout my life, but never all of it at one time. But… Now. I _have_ it now. All of it.” Her eyes went glassy all at once, welling in the dim lamplight. “…And all that had to happen for it was that Barbara and my dad had to die.”

I knelt in front of the chair as she melted into tears, drawing her close with Conner between us. I let her cry without speaking.

“I’m a monster,” she sobbed. “How can I be happy? Dick, _how?_ It’s all so _unfair_. Why is it _me?_ Why me? I’m a _horrible_ person, the only thing I’ve ever deserved is to go off and die with my dad, maybe then Barbara could live so I’d be out of the way—”

“Stop,” I told her softly. “Don’t say that.”

“It shouldn’t be me here,” she wept.

“Zatanna,” I said, and laid a hand on her wet cheek. “First of all, I understand what you’re saying. I do. You’re not alone in feeling like this, trust me. Ask any of us, we’re all here with you on this.” When she shook her head, I shook mine, and kissed the crown of her hair. “Just listen. Second of all, you’ve done nothing wrong. Okay? Nothing. You have _nothing_ to be ashamed of. Which brings me to point three—you’ve had a _hard_ life. You really have. It’s been a _very_ tough run.”

“Not as hard as some—”

“Oh, forget other people right now. They have nothing to do with this conversation. No other person’s supposedly crappy life is going to change the fact that you’ve lived hell on earth for _years.”_ I paused.“More like most of your life. If there’s anyone on this planet who _should_ be happy—it’s you. Don’t start talking about how you deserve to die or _any_ of that—not to sound too crass or insensitive here, but that’s complete _crap_ , Z. Okay?”

She was silent, gazing up at me.

“I mean it,” I told her. “And… I feel _really_ unworthy to be a part of that, I won’t lie. I think about it all the time, that it should have been me, and not them. And that goes all the way back to my parents.” I sighed. “Tula, Wally. All the others. But… I understand deceased loved ones cast long shadows, and survivor’s guilt really does the same. God knows you and I have more than our share of both between us. But listen—regardless of how we got to be here, or what happened to _bring_ us here—I’m _happy_ we’re here now.” I drew back a little, and smiled down at her. “I love you.”

She caved a little, and gave me a weak half-smile. 

“And that being said… I know this sounds cheesy as hell, but I wouldn’t trade you and Conner for anything,” I told her. “Whatever price needed paid for this, I’d pay it a billion times over.”

She looked up at me a moment, a full smile slowly crossing her damp face. “Wow, Dick… Did you take some sort of ‘I’m Perfect and Say All the Right Things’ pill this morning?” she said.

I chuckled, and she leaned into my chest, shifting Conner a little to the crook of her arm against her shoulder. I didn’t reply, or say anything—just held her like that for a good, long while.

“Think it’s a touch of PPD you’re feeling?” I asked eventually, not releasing her.

“…Maybe,” she said. “Max said it might be. Extended baby blues, or whatever. So… Maybe it’s that, maybe it’s…” She sighed. “Maybe I’m just sick of being stuck here. Cabin fever, something like that.” Her lips waned into a thin line. “ _God,_ I miss Hood work.”

“Well, no one’s keeping you from it,” I said. “If you’re ready to throw the cape back on—”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

There was a momentary silence.

Finally, she sighed, and returned her gaze to Conner. “…Oh, I don’t know. It just feels a bit like I’m running out on him. Risking myself when I shouldn’t.”

I nudged her chin when she looked up at me. “You’re not, trust me. We _are_ still protected—from Marauders, enforcers, the Light, so on. And like I said, the enforcers don’t even seem to care about us these days.” I tugged at a lock of her hair. “Look. Why don’t we take turns from here on out?”

She smiled, resting her chin on my chest. “What, like you go do Hood duty one night, and then I go the next?”

“Yeah. Can’t hurt to get out of the manor once in a while…” I chuckled. “Jeez, this place is like the Overlook Hotel just waiting to happen, the longer we’re all holed up here.” I held up two crooked fingers. “‘I don’t wanna go there, Mrs. Torrance.’”

She laughed. “Brucey, give me the bat.” 

“All work and no play makes Zatanna a dull girl…”

“Or a homicidal murderer,” she said. “…That term is totally redundant.”

“Here’s Zatanna!” I mock-shuddered. “You know, I’ll be honest, here—I don’t like my odds in a magic fight. Something tells me you’d go Circe on us.”

“Well, you know, all you’d have to do is gag me…” she said, then chuckled. 

“Do you _want_ me to gag you…?” 

She gaped. “I thought you’d never ask…”

I grinned down at her. 

“Like I said,” I told her, sobering a bit, “why don’t we take turns on Hood work? Whatever helps you stay whelmed.”

“Maybe.” She smiled. “I _do_ miss it a lot.”

“Well, no pressure,” I said. “You don’t have to make a decision right this second. But whenever you’re ready to jump back in, just say the word and _I’ll_ stay home. It’ll be nice not to be the one freezing my nuts off out on the streets for once.” She laughed and kissed my chin, and I leaned my forehead against hers. “Sound good?”

“Yep, I’ll steal _your_ body heat for a change,” she said.

“You can steal more than that,” I said. “Sleep, for example. I’ll sweeten the deal and even take up baby duty after you get back in and warmed up.”

“Now, talk like that is what makes you so sexy,” she said, her smile widening. 

I lifted a shoulder. “Nothing sexy about it. I just sound like a…” I drew up short, and she raised her brows. “Oh. Dear. God. A _parent_ ,” I moaned, speaking the last word as though it were a curse. I could just hear the _Psycho_ theme music, and grimaced. “Gone are the days…”

“You wear it well, Boy Wonder.”

I smiled, and got all warm and fuzzy-feeling at how _fond_ her voice sounded. I kissed her, my phasers by then set to frisky. “Maybe… But you know, what I _don’t_ really wear well is my underwear…”

She snorted. “What, do they bind?”

“Ehhh, they could use a little loosening up, maybe…”

“Let’s check, then, shall we?”

I happily nabbed the baby monitor as Zatanna laid Conner, still sleeping, in his crib, and we made off to the bedroom we shared. 

*******

_Months passed._

_Years passed._

_Hood work. Streets. Rations. Dwindling supplies. Promises for a better tomorrow, both from us, and from Savage. One’s covenants as false as the other’s. Unrest was short-lived, methane fires that blazed so spectacularly they burned themselves out all in little, clipped huffs. The minutest stirrings of rebellion swiftly stomped, the masses growing complacent and staggering through the ruins of the earth like dead things in return for food and water. Any rabble-rousers either gunned down on sight or violently beaten into working like slaves, erecting batteries, anti-artillery walls on the beaches and outskirts of the city, bomb depots, the strange factories used for God knows what. It didn’t matter what age they were._

_“The weak mutineer will die,” said Savage, “and the strong survive to put his admirable zeal to better use.”_

_So many deplorable echoes of the past._

_So many sterile faces and dull, staring eyes. Corpses littering the streets, choleric and caked in filth. Some dolorous, squalid bodies still walking, defying all sense by moving in spite of their desiccated flesh and shriveled bones. Watching, wondering if I appeared as downhearted and mired in despair as the waspish street folk that darted from one building to the next, all to avoid the streets with their unannounced raids by the faceless, mysterious Marauders._

_And, all the while, never being sure which was worse, the gnawing, increasingly desperate hunger in spite of the successes of our own small greenhouses and the larger rations we were permitted, or the decaying boredom of being locked inside in the dark with never enough light or things to do._

*******

We acquired an unexpected housemate at Conner’s eighth birthday party. 

Not to say that our “family” wasn’t unusual already. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was downright _weird_. Zatanna was the only female in the manor, the men all comprised of, for every intent and purpose, vigilantes and rebels. Even our resident furball, that being Wolf, was male. (Poor Zatanna.) And the boy, raised from his babyhood by this ragtag crew. Still, Conner at least _seemed_ to flourish—he was, overall, a joyful, sensitive, thoughtful child, highly creative, and pretty prolific with drawing. He was a ready teleportation device to happier places, and while he astonished me at times with his awareness of goings-on outside of the standard eight-year-old things, he appeared, for the most part, to be a perfectly normal kid. Precocious, sure. But normal. 

(Okay. As an aside—I think _every_ dad sits there and lauds his child’s gifts as extraordinary, but I’m not retracting my own belief to that end. So there.)

Zatanna always made a big to-do about our son’s birthdays, and honestly, we were all happy to oblige her in her desires to make the occasions special, at least until she would go without and work for months to compile the bartering tools necessary to acquire what she needed. She resolutely ignored my obstreperous railing at her to take better care of herself, however, and wound up with all manner of things needed to craft a decent birthday party. Realizing she was not going to be swayed, I gave up and indulged her, but leapt into the fray and went without right alongside her to decrease the strain it put on her. It was always completely worth a few months of noted, increased hunger, though—I deeply enjoyed the little shindigs, and I think the others did, too. 

And honestly, it didn’t take me long to become doubly grateful to Zatanna for sparking these efforts on Conner’s first birthday, as they led to an increased attempt on all parts at normalcy—things I thought I would never do with my son, among them celebrating Christmases, Easters, Thanksgivings, however meager they might have been; even taking him Trick-or-Treating on Halloween when the suburbs in Gotham could host the event. However, when Conner’s best friend from Gotham, Zara’s son, maybe a year or two older than he was, suddenly and tragically died of the outbreak of cholera that attacked the city at that time, we quit taking him out altogether, opting instead to formulate some version of Halloween in the manor itself. The event certainly wasn’t the same as it had been in the years that I was young, and the holiday itself was shadowed by the tragedy that had befallen Zara, her family, and indirectly, us as well, but it passed tolerably enough—we each stood at the doors lining the second floor corridor, handing out the treats we’d amassed over the months preceding as Conner traipsed in makeshift costume from door to door. 

Well, while celebrating Conner’s eighth birthday party, I was marveling (again) over how much more _comfortable_ Bruce seemed with expressing affection and warmth to Conner, his grandson (a new leaf, perhaps?), and suffering some unanticipated nostalgia for my son’s younger years when the resounding, rolling sound of the doorbell bounced through the manor.

All of us drew up short, although it’s not like Marauders were purported ever to have used a doorbell before busting in. Sometimes enforcers came to beg for food, but they always knocked on the little door in the back that led to the kitchen. Zatanna immediately grabbed Conner and pulled him to her, giving me a fearful look. Sometimes the Light’s goons—Marauders and enforcers alike—were ordered to scan and gather children who had meta-genes for, as they were told, “fostering purposes,” alongside their adult meta-human quarry (as yet, used for ends unknown—brainwashing and muscle for the Light cropped up as possibilities.) Someone might have missed the memo on our supposed protection. 

On a critical side note, all other indiscretions aside, I had a feeling the building turmoil in the hearts of the masses was due to these mass acquisitions of children, and it would culminate in a fairly epic explosion before long. Subjecting vociferous insurgents to severe beat-downs in the form of veiled slavery, however terrible, was one thing; snatching up children quite another—on a plane far less sufferable, a consummate lid-blower. And the entire world was slowly transforming into a giant pressure-cooker with every month that passed. On top of all of this, enforcers also handed particularly verbose insurrectionaries over to the Light’s rep that oversaw Gotham (at that time, Ubu, having taken the al Ghuls’ place within the organization), where they were, when not put to death, forked over to the behemoth compound built in the center of the city, supposedly a network of fuel factories conglomerated into one complex, but known to Gothamites as the so-called “Death Shaft.”

This Death Shaft was as much an open-faced sandwich as the Marauders were—frankly, I didn’t buy that it was a fuel plant. The place was more reminiscent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, to put a kind tack on it, or of a goddamned Dachau, to put a _real_ tack on it. Mammoth cement walls rose up around the place, topped with razor wire laced with electrical charge, always patrolled on the outside by an overkill of guards, its surface marred with anti-Sam propaganda pieces. Occasionally, foul, black, belching, greasy smoke roiled from the two enormous smoke stacks protruding ominously from the west end of the compound. Residents in Gotham reported seeing trucks going in, coming out, all at unexpected hours, tarps drawn over the beds. Rumors as to what they contained crept about the city like an infection. Workers were glimpsed next to never within the complex’s confines—only the plethora of sentinels, all armed to the gills, all studiously safeguarding every last inch of that place as jealously as a miser a gold piece. The rioters sent to its foreboding interior never again came out.

Fuel factory, my ass, I figured. The whole thing was fishy as hell (although, at that time, I had no idea just _how_ fishy—but we would, all of us, be treated to a firsthand glance soon enough.) 

Fearful now that the protection we enjoyed had now gone the way of the dodo and it was off to the Death Shaft with us, or that Conner was discovered and Marauders sent to acquire him (and Zatanna, come to think of it), for the Light, Jason and Alfred stayed with her and the boy as I headed to the front door with Bruce, both of us tensed and ready. When Bruce opened the door, we paused.

Luthor.

“I hate to impose on you,” he said, “but I have some unfavorable news.” 

“What is it?” asked Bruce.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Why, are you a vampire?” I snapped. 

“I am not,” said Luthor, “but equally, I am no Yeti, either. It’s freezing. Step aside so I can come in.”

We acquiesced, though not happily, and subjected him, again, to a thorough strip search before leading him into the parlor. When he entered, he paused at the sight of Conner, eight years old that day, his wild, jet black hair sticking up in all directions, his form small and unimposing in his jeans and sweatshirt. The atmosphere went from tense to pyroclastic in an instant. 

“Well. That’s new. Which one of you bulls played stud to the solo heifer?” asked Lex evenly into the strained, thick air.

“Does it matter?” Bruce asked harshly, sitting down, and allowing Conner to climb onto the chair beside him. 

“You don’t know he’s one of ours, anyway, Lex,” said Zatanna, without missing a beat. 

“It’s easy enough to draw conclusions,” he said, “given that he resembles you.” He eyed me up and down. “Now, if I had to peg the father, I’d say it was _this_ strapping gent.”

I got irritated, not that I wasn’t already on edge. “How’d you guess,” I muttered. “My unparalleled studliness give me away?”

“The eyes.”

I rolled said eyes by way of response.

When Lex stepped toward Conner and Bruce, seeming interested in an introduction, Conner frowned, and eyed the hand extended to him with great suspicion. Finally, he held his own hand out, seated as he was on Bruce’s knee, and Luthor shook it.

“I am pleased to make the acquaintance of such a charming young man,” said Lex. “What’s your name?”

“…Conner,” he said, his face uncharacteristically shy. 

I didn’t mistake the look of regret that passed, very briefly, over Lex’s face. Bruce laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. At his fierce, jealous expression, Luthor backed away, and had a seat in a free chair. I came to stand beside where Bruce sat with Conner, and Zatanna, equally bear-like, moved in unison. 

“So. What’s the news?” asked Bruce.

“The news is that there has been… added pressure from Savage,” said Luthor. “The scrubbers, as you very well know, have been arguably successful, so far. There are signs of diminished ash and soot in the atmosphere. The results will show soon enough. So…”

He trailed off, and became silent. I’ll admit I got very tired of his flair for the theatrical. 

“…So there is no longer any real reason to keep me alive,” Bruce finished. His face was impassive. “Or you, for that matter.”

“Or any of the people in this room,” Luthor explicated. “Including that child.”

If Zatanna had hackles, they’d have raised. Same with mine, again, if I had any. Wolf lowered his head, his shingly black lips peeling back from his huge, curving teeth, a monstrous rumble rolling from his great throat. This general reaction went on down the line, the pack banding together to protect the young. Bruce, however, remained unperturbed. 

“Oh, calm down, all of you,” Lex snapped, for once expressing legitimate irritation. “I’m not here to threaten your brood, for God’s sake. I’m here to _preserve_ it.”

“Explain,” I growled.

Bruce lifted a hand. “I’m with Lex. Everyone calm down.” He turned his attention to Luthor. “Now. I take it that you are here to warn us of our spent protection and give us the opportunity to go off the grid?”

“Not exactly. I have been required to turn you over to my fellows within the Light,” said Luthor, “and… as a reward, I will be granted command over the enforcers in the Gotham Regional as this sector’s representative of the Light, and equally be permitted to reside within this house.”

There was a silence as this descended, and we anticipated what he was going to say next. Or for the Marauders or enforcers to storm the manor. Whichever came first.

Luthor spoke.

“That being said, I have no intention of turning any of you over,” he said. “I am in the process of formulating a plan, one in which your death will _not_ prove expedient to me in any way at this time. Therefore, I have no desire to do as Savage asks. If you should assist me in my work, however, you may yet be given a fighting chance.”

“You know, we’re getting pretty well shot of being in your debt, Luthor,” Jason said. 

“This is an arrangement beneficial to both parties,” said Lex. “As the years have passed, I think I need not tell you that I have become mountingly dissatisfied with my superiors in the Light. I have been made promises, none of which have been kept. This is not to cast doubt on the good that Savage has done the world at this time—”

Jason snorted. 

“He has, young man, whether you realize it or not,” Luthor continued calmly. “It is only by his genius that there is any infrastructure, economy, or enterprise anywhere on this earth.” 

“No one’s denying that,” said Bruce. “However, it’s a bitter pill. You understand his whole… ‘Permission of Evolution’ policies are a bit off-putting to most of those civilians who have had to bear the brunt of their effects. Some might argue that the evils the policies have borne outweigh the benefits he has provided, however massive.”

“Indeed,” said Luthor, “and I agree with those same civilians. If you ask my opinion, there is no true evolution without equally true setbacks, as well as subsequent safeguarding, that foster genius and resourcefulness. So… what he feels might evolve the species, might very well render it extinct. He is brilliant, to be sure, but he’s become a hardened old bastard who’s begun to lack foresight. There’s not a shade of gray on the scale through which he views the world.”

“And that’s why you’re willing to make a deal to help us?”

“Not just that,” said Lex. “Like I said, he has made promises, and not been true to them. I was offered pittances that I was later denied. I understand that he tolerates me for as long as it is beneficial to him to do so, but you can imagine that this leaves a sour taste in my mouth—I am not an unambitious man, and I am not one to allow my successes to be dictated by the whims of others. To seize the opportunities for success provided to me by another fellow’s moves, now, that is quite another matter. However, to have to sit on my hands, and wait until a bigger fish tells me that it is now okay to swim, well.” He shook his head. “That aside, I’ve become rather put off by some of his…” Lex frowned, his lips going thin, his forehead creasing. “Some of his more iron-handed ways of going about doing things, and his overall worldview.” He leaned forward. “If my hand is forced, my hand is forced. On his head be it.”

“What’s this plan?” asked Zatanna. “And how do we factor into it?”

“First off,” said Luthor, “I need _your_ skills, Miss Zatara. I have farmed five bodies from the streets, and it is my expectation that you will perform an illusory, transmutative, or physiomorphic spell to render them facsimiles of yourselves. _Convincing_ facsimiles—ones that none of our sorcerers will be able to see through.”

She gaped at him. “You mean to tell me that you mined the streets for dead bodies and you expect me to cast spells of illusion or transmutation over them so that they look like us?”

“Did _you_ kill them?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” said Lex. “They died of cholera.”

“And you brought them here?” said Bruce, the first flickerings of anger crossing his face.

“You’re not afraid to venture out into the streets and potentially contract the disease,” Lex pointed out. “Why are you squeamish now? And if you bring up the kid on your knee, well. I repeat my first sentence.”

“My father would have been hard-pressed to perform this task, Luthor,” said Zatanna. “And I’m only _just_ on his level.”

“I have faith and confidence in your abilities, Miss Zatara,” said Lex. “Surely, with your life on the line, and the lives of the men in this room, and that of your very young boy, you can find the strength necessary to accomplish this feat.” 

Her eyes hardened, glittering. “What’s the purpose in keeping us alive at all, Luthor? I seriously doubt it’s from the goodness of your heart.”

“I will need you later on,” said Luthor, “to begin a legitimate resistance effort, once the time is right.”

There was silence.

“ _You_ want to start a _resistance?”_ Jason said. 

“I do,” said Luthor. “In time. Not now—it’s _my_ belief that underground rebellion normally does not work. Some specific sacrifice to unite a people that have been suffering must be made first, if it’s going to really take. And frankly, I don’t foresee anything of that nature occurring any time soon, given that more time needs to pass if a great enough percentage of the population is to be moved by the deaths of former Justice League affiliates to effectively rise up. So, clearly, your ‘dying’ will not be a sufficient event to unite the people. However, something may yet turn up, and I will be counting on you, and your surviving compatriots, to be ready when that time comes.”

“This smacks of a big, fat trap,” Jason said.

“I agree,” said Alfred.

“Motion thirded,” I added helpfully. 

“Dear children,” said Lex, “have you learned nothing about me over all of these years?” 

“We’ve learned plenty,” I said. 

“We all have,” Bruce chimed in, “and I think we’re oversimplifying Mr. Luthor’s intentions a bit, here.”

“Leave it to the World’s Greatest Detective,” Lex said. “You are, indeed, all of you, oversimplifying my plans.”

“Okay, so what _are_ your plans, then, Luthor?” I asked, exasperated. “Have us fake our deaths, stay in hiding, which, essentially, means that we all hang out and play house with _you_ —the for-all-practical-purposes mayor of the Gotham Regional—until you’re feeling, I don’t know, _frolicsome_ and decide it’s time to start a resistance? And then _your_ ass is going to take over the world?”

“In a nutshell, yes. I think we can agree that I am far more capable than Savage at this point. In the meantime, we can pool our resources and brainstorm together as to how we might, in fact, pull off such a feat.”

“Oh, _hell_ no,” said Jason.

“Yeah, I’m with Jay,” I said, shaking my head. “Only up it to a big ‘fuck no.’”

“As am I, with both,” Alfred murmured.

“Well, band together and refuse. If I do not produce your bodies by tonight,” said Luthor, “the Marauders _will_ come—and not only will you be killed, but that boy, as well.”

“Oh, aren’t you the comedian,” hissed Jason. “If we have warning that they’re coming and put some space between us and are prepared to handle them, they’ll have another thing coming when they _do_ catch up.”

“Marauders are no fools,” said Luthor. “Have you any idea what they do to Sams they catch?”

“They run crying butt-hurt to Mommy,” I snapped. 

“Wishful thinking, Mr. Grayson,” said Lex. “Many of their groups have plenty of highly effective weapons at their disposal. And with all due respect, the majority of these are men that have been cast into the wilderness to find their prey—fugitive Leaguers, vigilantes, enemies of the Light, particularly pesky metas on the lam from them. And they’re men who have _always_ been inclined to the… well, to put it politely, for the young ears present, the _darker_ sides of things. And where they are now… they have not been touched, or afforded any _real_ sovereignty, whether they’ve picked up on that little fact or not, in _years_. The life that they lead now has made them even _more_ severe _._ Bestial, even. Savage, and not as in Vandal. So don’t think that a good lot of them won’t hesitate to overpower and _take_ everything they can from you— _all_ of you—in every way you can possibly imagine, regardless of your sex or age, before they kill you or turn you over to Savage per their orders. It’s all a part of their _reward,_ you see. And they follow very few rules to carry out their orders. The rumors that I _know_ you’ve heard about a few of these groups? All true. _You_ are the ones who will be butt-hurt—quite literally.”

“Dick,” said Bruce, as I stepped furiously toward Lex, “he’s safeguarded us so far. And frankly, considering it, he’s had _plenty_ of opportunities— _better_ opportunities, in fact—to quit doing so. I doubt that he would be so forward now.”

I paused. Bruce, as always, was right. 

There was a long, long, _long_ silence, discomfited, and noisy with thought. 

Then, finally, Zatanna sighed, slowly, deeply, and then approached Lex. 

“Where are the bodies?” she asked. 

That clinched things.

“Just outside,” said Lex. “Your timely response is most appreciated, Miss Zatara.” 

She didn’t say anything, just allowed Luthor to lead her outside through the main doors. 

And from that point, Lex resided in the manor, to become our strange houseguest.


	8. Art Thou Not Sorry For These Heinous Deeds?

_Icy water rushing. The sky streaked with yellow and orange. Some of the first color I’ve seen overhead in years. The bleached, anemic landscape somehow beautiful, the black tracing of the trees pronounced like inkwork against the colorful sky._

_The Marauders on the opposite shore, disquietingly nearby at this narrow ford, their enormous hounds snuffling gruesomely across the brumal earth, seeking us. My son quaking beside me, resolutely holding the veil, Wolf sheltering us. None of us daring to breathe._

_Voices, shouting to each other, talking about us, perceptible in the silence of the morning, even over the chattering of the water._

_“Think they crossed?”_

_“Maybe. I’m not seeing tracks here, though.”_

_“Hounds seem to be missing the scent, too. Weird.”_

_“Eh, if they have a magician with them they might have teleported out of here.”_

_“Shit.”_

_“Yeah. Not a trace of them halfway up the river. Might have rabbit sickness, they were all going in circles back in the woods. You know, by the river before we got to that rec building?”_

_“Mighta drowned.”_

_“Well, that’d make our job easier, although Savage won’t be too thrilled to know that he’s missed out on the meta.”_

_“He’ll get over it. Come on, let’s get moving. Anything’s better than freezing our balls off lookin’ for them.”_

_“Yeah, all right.”_

_Then, the sounds and voices mercifully fading, swallowed up in the gelid air._

_*******_

“Dad?”

“Hmm.”

“Do you think Mom can see us right now?”

I look up at the stars, finally visible after years of nothing but smog and mist shrouding the sky, night and day, with an ugly, smirched mantle. Conner has been completely fascinated by them since they twinkled into sight overhead, demanding to hear everything I know about astronomy and astrophysics. I’ve indulged him, fighting through the dumbing chill in my body and straining my tired, hungry brain for the memory files containing remembered teachings of known experts in both fields on the universe. I catch myself wondering what became of them when the Horsemen appeared out of the infinity of space that so fascinated and compelled these people. Whether they’re still on the earth somewhere, working as hard as Bruce and I did to disentangle the knotted mystery behind the invaders. At this point, the biting hunger in my abdomen has its teeth in my brain, and my thoughts come sluggish and strained, even the least arduous of them hurting my temples. 

I didn’t anticipate having to talk about Zatanna, which I just really am not ready to do.

Still. Things shift when you’re a parent. You just kind of learn to endure and astonish yourself at just how much you can bear.

“I think she can,” I tell him.

“Grandpa, too?”

“Yep.”

“Alfred?”

“Mm-hmm.”

"Freddy, too..."

Zara's son, his friend. I continue walking, my feet all at once noticeably heavier. There's no way Zara didn't join her son when Gotham was razed. I nod, sick, unspeaking.

He looks over at me. “What happened to Uncle Jay?”

“…The enemy got him.”

“But _how_ did it happen?”

I heave a sigh. “He and Grandpa were kind of strained sometimes, Conner. They had a disagreement and he split off. They caught him by himself.”

“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment, trailing along beside me. “…What was the disagreement?”

“Just how they went about doing things.”

“What kind of things?”

I’m not so tired or hungry that I can’t feel an annoyed amusement at his incessant questions through the sting of grief. “…Pretty much everything, kiddo.”

“Did Uncle Jay fight with more people than just Grandpa?” Conner asks. “I mean… Grandpa never _said_ it, but it kind of sounded like he did.”

I considered. “…Sort of, but not really. Jason was just always kind of matter over mind. Sometimes it got him and others in trouble.”

“…Grandpa always said ‘mind over matter.’ What does that mean?”

“It basically means you put more stock in your mind than in situations or physical things.”

Conner frowns. “So… he acted without thinking. Or reacted.”

I nodded, sighed. “…Yeah.”

“Do _you_ act without thinking?”

I consider that a moment. “Sometimes. I try _really_ hard not to, though. Your grandpa worked on that a lot with me when I was training to become Robin.”

“Is it always better to think before you act?”

“It’s hard to say, kiddo. Sometimes things happen too fast for any form of active thought, you know?”

“Oh.”

Silence. Boreal silence. 

Then—

“Dad?”

“Hmm.”

“I love you.”

I look over at him, and smile. “I love you, too.”

We really should camp soon—we’ve been walking all day, following the river against the current to move south. This morning, we dug up a handful of roots, insignificant and tasteless, to eat and peeled bark from the trees to give to Wolf. It all served only to emphasize the weakness brought on by our clawing hunger as we trudged across the snow, the wind hateful and knifing through our clothing, burning our exposed skin, checking our heartbeats. My son marveled through his discomfort over the sudden burgeoning of color in the sky. The scrubbers are starting to really work, I explained to him through my squeezing chest and chattering teeth—what we see now is the sky, at last peeping through the curtain of smog. The next step, once this one is complete, which might be some time yet, is ozone repair—if it’s even possible.

A sweeping edifice of rock and earth rises up ahead of us—if we can get some height and cover, it will be a decent place to camp. I lead the way up, carving a careful path along the embankment through my unfeeling members, passing the stabbing remains of stubby pines. We come to an overlook before long, below us the splintered, shambling remains of a railed, wooden walkway leading to a proliferation of steam that billows ghost-like in the wind. I hold an arm out to Conner, uncertain of whether the steam is actually smoke from campfires—meaning risk of strangers, enforcers, Marauders, who knows.

I kneel down, using a jutting outcropping of rock for cover, and boot up my holographic computer via my wrist piece, which I use only for dire scenarios, so as to avoid losing charge and eating through the battery-powered portable chargers I carry in the backpack. I scan the environment below, and catch my breath at what I find.

“Oh, Conner, it’s a hot spring,” I say, staring in stark disbelief at the readings I’m seeing on the hovering screen. The water below us sits at 104 degrees, blessedly unaffected by the frequent chilly precipitation. The composition of the water itself is safe enough, and there are no apparent signs of life nearby—human or otherwise. 

_This can’t be true,_ I think to myself _. It_ can’t _be real._

But, according to the steam unfurling frantically beneath where we stand, and the readings on my computer, _it is._

“A hot spring?” asks Conner, breaking into my silent shock, looking curiously at me.

“It’s geothermally heated groundwater that comes up all the from the earth’s crust,” I explain, coming out of my astonished stupor. “Plenty of them are way too hot to even consider going anywhere near, but this one’s okay. You ready to go defrost in a hot bath, kiddo?”

“You mean there’s warm water down there?” he queries, his eyes going huge above his scarf. 

“Not just warm, _hot,”_ I tell him, unable to help myself grinning. My body, stupid with cold, vibrates just at the _idea_ of a soak in hot water—it’s been _years_ since I actually _immersed_ in water warmer than freezing.

We scramble down the hillside to the wooden walkway. Around us are the old, broken down remains of a gazebo, the roof gone, one wall completely missing, more whittled down to wooden bones, the remainder in reasonable shape. Within its confines, rising from a pocked, cracking mouth of concrete—the spring, steaming, vivid aquamarine, a dazzling blossom of color against the muted, washed-out noir of the world, absolutely gorgeous. 

Already I feel my numb body, which has ached to the marrow with the hounding, pervasive cold since the dip in the river the day before, tingling and rediscovering feeling, as it warms in the balmy vapor from the water. Conner and Wolf both gratefully hedge closer to the water’s edge.

This must have been a resort once, I think, taking note of the shuffling, forsaken complex of buildings, once elegant, but now in great disrepair, beauty queens ravaged by age and elements, a short ways off from us, connected to this site by the neglected relics of more walkways. Wolf seems especially interested in these rangy old buildings, his ears perked with interest, his nose testing the wind, his tail wagging. I can’t tell if he’s interested or stressed—at least, not yet.

I dismiss his intense focus on the buildings, turning my own attention back to the hot spring.

“Let’s warm up a bit before we get in,” I tell Conner, itching to just yank my damp, stiff, frosted clothes off and sink up to my neck into that sweet, heavenly relief, _forcing_ myself to wait. 

“Can’t we get in now?” he asks unhappily, his chin quavering with his rattling teeth, as he eyes the water with deep longing.

“We really shouldn’t,” I tell him. “We’re not in any _trouble,_ per se, but we’re pretty low on body temp right now, and if we go in no holds barred and just dive in there without warming up slowly first, it’ll be badnews bears.”

“How come?”

“Well,” I explain, “if you’re as cold as we are—i.e. can’t feel your limbs, dizzy, weak, sleepy, past or almost past shivering—and you go all in on a hot bath, the hot water can open up your blood vessels too quickly, and your blood pressure at that point could seriously just _tank_ —basically meaning your brain, heart, lungs, and so on are going to massively suffer or shut down entirely thanks to that massively decreased blood flow.” 

“Oh,” says Conner. “Yeah, bad news bears.”

We sit, far from patient, next to Wolf, who shields us from the wind with his warm mass even as he restively glances periodically at the buildings, and watch the steam as it beckons to us with enticing, translucent fingers. Finally, when we’re shivering, but no longer anesthetized under the chill, I pat Conner’s shoulder.

“All right, kiddo,” I say, “let’s hop in.”

We strip down carelessly, and, giddy as schoolchildren, step into the sweet, hot, almost forgotten bliss of one of the earth’s greatest boons.

To my even greater gratification, seats are built into the sides of this pool, and I slowly ease down onto one, and release a breath as the hot water rises up to my shoulders. 

Conner sags into the water up to his chin, the color slowly returning to his white face and blue lips. I close my eyes, and lean back against the lip of the pool, luxuriating, feeling the heat as it soaks through my skin and into my blood, my bones, reanimating my vitals. It’s been too damn long since I could just seek relief from inclemency in so much extravagance, unrestrained, guiltless, unquestioned.

As I’m on the cusp of drifting off, drunk off the increasing heat in my core and the slow unraveling of my strung, knotted muscles, Conner paddles across the pool, ducking his head down and popping back up, circling his arms and fluttering his feet. The spring isn’t overly wide, though, and after a time, he tapers in his efforts, and rests against the wall of the spring on one side. I smile, watching him, then cup my hands in the water, and shoot a stream at him. In response, he protests and shoves a breaker at me. I chuckle, and lean back again, unfortunately too spent to continue in play. 

Conner seems much the same, wandering over to have a seat beside me. 

“This is so nice,” he says. “I wish we didn’t have to leave.”

“There might be food in those buildings over there,” I say. “I’ll take a look tomorrow—I’m too fried to look tonight. Might be worth it to stay an extra day if I can turn something up.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Conner says fervently, sinking deeper into the water.

When we finally climb out of the water, pruned, relaxed, and at long last really, truly _warm_ , we towel off, dress, and curl up under the blankets in the soft, humid steam against Wolf’s side. He reads for a bit while I relax, one of his new books I pinched from the Purge’s decimated stronghold. Sharon Creech’s _Walk Two Moons._ It occurs to me, watching as he turns the pages until his eyes go droopy, that we haven’t worked on his schooling since we lost his mother. I make up my mind to start that back up tomorrow night, and tell him as much. Then we sleep fast, no longer vying for rest under the persistent hooks of the neverending chill, but sliding readily into the welcoming embrace of comfortable slumber, bought in the heat beside the spring. 

When morning comes, I blink against the light, my body heavier than a Bosendorfer piano beneath the blankets. Conner continues to slumber, undisturbed by my own waking. Wolf yawns, stretches one foreleg, and again, looks off in the direction of the buildings. A light, lazy gray snow falls unhurriedly from the sky. 

While Conner continues to rest with Wolf, I treat myself to another soak in the spring, my bruised, tense, injured body soothed in the water, my deadened senses invigorated beneath the relief. 

With the relaxation, however, come the thoughts, no longer dulled by my discomfort.

_They didn’t suffer._

I grit my teeth, close my eyes, lean my head against the edge of the pool.

_It’s better this way._

Again, I picture Sawyer, a faceless woman in a shroud of shadow, her back to me, moving noiselessly among the sleeping bodies of the unwary children, armed with her serum and her syringe.

My mind roams to an unwanted headspace.

I know damn well that the day will come that I may be in a spot in which I have to make the same terrible choice. I also know damn well that day might very well be all too soon. I don’t even ask questions—I just know. 

And I carry one such syringe—probably full of the same poison. Enough adrenaline to do the job fifteen times over on a horse.

It wasn’t something I’d personally chosen, and it wasn’t something I’d _ever_ so much as have even considered, but Bruce had pressed it into my palm before he shoved me into the stale confines of the safe within the Bat Cave.

“You know what to do with it,” he hissed. “Don’t let it come to that.”

I rest my hand against my head, the warm water dribbling down my temples.

There is something that confounds me about my son. 

And it’s not that he powerfully reminds me of his mother, not that he occasionally exhibits traits that he shares with his deceased grandparents whom he never met, and nor is it his apparent resilience to the considerable mess we’re presently in. 

My son, for some reasons as yet entirely unfathomable to me, trusts me. He _trusts_ me. No matter how astronomically I’ve bonked caring for him. 

Regardless of my pathetic and continually multiplying deficiencies, he looks at me with an unswerving, guileless, abiding faith—faith I sure as shit haven’t earned, and I fear with increasing ardor I will forfeit. 

_The Marauders do ungodly things to children._

Whatever evils the Marauders visit upon children, to me, right now, they are amorphous, nebulous anathemas, formless and unknown. However, I _do_ know, distressingly well, what savageries the Light will levy on Conner if they ever get their hands on him. 

But even with this much disquieting gen, one question gnaws at my mind with so many serrated, needling teeth.

If I _do_ let it come to that—

_They didn’t suffer—_

_—_ Will I do it?

 _Can_ I?

I envisage my son’s undoubting face, gazing at me with that unfaltering trust, not suspecting, not questioning, as I deliberately, and knowingly, _end_ _him_.

I squeeze my temples with my fingers, expel a breath into the balmy air. 

I just don’t know.

When I’m almost _too_ warm, I step, heartsick and weary, out of the water, and set about drying off and dressing, disregarding my fatigue and melancholy. I take some time to craft a pair of makeshift packs out of two of the blankets, poking holes in the ends with a stray bit of sharp wood from the derelict gazebo, and threading the remaining lengths of rope—which just two days ago I’d used to tether myself to my son on the ill-fated bridge across the river—through the holes. They tie and hold well enough, and, satisfied, I attach them to my belt loops. Once we’ve found food, I’ll have to focus on turning up some forms of makeshift weapons. 

“Conner,” I murmur, leaning down beside him, and laying a hand on his shoulder. He turns over, opens sleep-smeared eyes at me. “I’m heading down to the buildings to scout for food. Veil up and hang out with Wolf up here until I get back, okay?”

“Can I come?” he asks. 

I pause, consider. Odds are, it’s safe enough—the buildings, at least to my eye from this distance, don’t appear to be nearly as ramshackle and unsound as the Purge stronghold had been. Equally, we’ve fallen behind the Marauders, at least for now, and there hasn’t been a sniff of another human being since. 

“Sure,” I tell him with a smile. “Get dressed.”

He does, and we set off in the direction of the old buildings, Wolf trailing beside us. It’s not a far walk, not even a few hundred meters, and we’ve arrived at the heart of them before long, facing a particularly large edifice that might have once been impressive. Like so many structures nowadays, it’s no longer anything of note, just another assembly gone to dissolution. 

I look down, surprised, when the hair about Wolf’s haunches prickles up, and he lowers his neck, his ears forward, his tail lifting behind him, swishing steadily. Suddenly, he raises his head, chuffs, and then whines, pacing off a ways, then coming back. 

“What’s up, Wolf?” I ask him. 

He whines, looking up at me, sitting down beside Conner. 

“What’s the matter?” he asks, rubbing Wolf’s ears. 

Wolf pants nervously, rises, and trots away from the building, then back, his tail sweeping, his voice whimpering continuously in his throat. 

“What’s wrong, buddy?” I ask him, kneeling down in front of him, rubbing his shoulders. He pants more insistently, and lifts a paw to briefly rest it on my knee before he rises and, again, turns a restless circle. 

“You trying to tell us something, boy?” Conner asks, joining me where I kneel. 

Wolf issues a low huffing sound, and backs away from the building, his head shimming back and forth. 

“Wolf, listen pal,” I tell him, kneeling down, “I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but we _really_ need to check that building for any supplies it might have. If something’s not on the up-and-up in there, we’re going to _have_ to risk it, or we’ll starve. There’s not a lot of choice here. Okay?”

He barks, and I hold my hand up. 

“Shhh,” I tell him. “No Marauders nearby as far as we know, but we want to keep it that way, remember?”

He whines, circles, and then finally, falls into step beside Conner as we head to the doors of the building. 

I don’t have my lock-picking tools anymore, but the way into the building is simple enough, purchased by way of wedging the thin, laminated cover of one of the books I’d nabbed from the stronghold in between the casement and pane of the window beside the entryway, dislodging the old, weakened lock, and then jimmying it upward, loosening it from its frame enough to lift it open. A black cloth hangs beyond the window, tacked at the top, free hanging at the bottom. We shuffle underneath, one at a time, single file, lighting inside the building.

The interior is astonishingly uncluttered—not quite clean, but not the festering, piled filth that I expected. Wolf’s tail continues to swish unhappily, and as I take in the lack of disrepair amid the scuffed, wooden floors and taupe walls, something nags at my awareness, some intuitive thing whispering that something _really_ isn’t right—something under the surface, the scene around us a film sequence full of the “uncanny,” and I all at once experience some forceful misgivings about being inside this place.

“Conner,” I murmur, “can you veil us?”

“…Yeah, sure,” he says, frowning at me. “I thought you said there was no one around.”

“I’m not so sure,” I say, keeping my voice low. 

Conner speaks, casting the spell, and we move on deeper into the building, my steps guided now by a morbid sense of curiosity and dread alongside the need for supplies.

I draw up, noticing that the windows on this floor are blacked out, painted over or covered with dark curtains—just like the one we entered through. I draw Conner closer to me, pull the Escrima from the holsters, and shift our path closer to the hallway wall. 

“Dad?” Conner murmurs.

“Stay close,” I whisper to him. 

Blacked windows don’t necessarily mean residents dwell here right this red hot second, but the tidiness of the foyer, these curtains, and the pervading sense of dread that saturates this place like mold raises my guard, along with the hairs on the back of my neck. We move through the corridor, coming into a room floor to ceiling with shelves, formerly what might have been a changing room. 

My heart lapses into my stomach when I toggle the light and observe the shelves. 

Folded mounds of clothes. Varying backpacks. Rows of shoes. Piles of books, neatly stacked, clean. Camping gear. Blankets. Stuffed animals. 

We’re not alone. 

Whoever stays here, then, must have been gone last night, possibly to the shell of some town nearby, maybe to look for supplies.

Still—we’re hedging toward desperate, and it’s not as though I look especially distinguished from any of the other gaggle of vagabonds that roam the country at this time. None would know just by my appearance alone that I’m a fugitive Sam. If I can offer the person or people who live here something in reward (granted, I don’t have much in the way of goods to proffer in return for food, but bartering in my experience even with small things like toiletries usually goes over well enough), we may yet make it out of here with some small prize. I take one of the packs, and leave the backpack with my son.

“Hold onto this until I get back. Keep the veils up and stay here,” I tell the boy, nerves knotting my abdominals, my words curt. “Wolf, you hang with him. Same plan if I don’t come back.”

Conner nods, and as I move out of the range of his invisibility spell, I see him melt with Wolf into the backdrop, as though neither was ever there. 

I move through the building, keeping to the darkest patches, listening with my good ear as best as I can, catching no untoward noises. 

I move through an area that might have been a dining room, and then into the kitchen beyond. Curious, I inspect the cupboards. There isn’t much, but there’s enough to share, at least, depending upon how many people dwell here. My hands _long_ to snatch up a few items, as I gaze with marrow-deep yearning upon what options there are (a couple packets of instant noodles, a sack of oats, some bags of dried fruit, a few cans of vegetables, two boxes of crackers), but I ignore the hopeful clamoring of my stomach, close the cupboard doors, and continue on. I _won’t_ be a thief. Not yet. 

I pass the metal door of an industrial-sized refrigerator. Some instinctive itch stays my steps, guiding me back to its face. There’s a square window, small, and clouded. More food, I’m assuming, is preserved somehow in this icebox. 

I know I don’t need to inspect its contents just now, given I’m more on a mission to negotiate a trade without inciting a fight than taking inventory, but, guided by the same intuitive impulse that turned my path back to this spot, I grasp the handle, and nudge open the door. 

I leap backwards, falling to my seat on the slick floor.

“Oh, _Jesus_ ,” I screech, heedless of alerting anyone that might now be in the building. “Jesus—Jesus—”

I keep repeating this, a petrified mantra, as I goggle in shock and terror at the contents of the refrigerator. 

Gawping through the open doorway, I gulp down breaths that won’t enter my lungs, staring utterly agog at the skinned, bloody, headless torso of a human being, hanging by the ankles from the ceiling of the refrigerator, dangling like a grotesque, twisted Christmas ornament among two other decapitated, hulled torsos, all suspended alongside slabs of glaring red meat, every last one of them suspiciously as humanoid as their more outward brethren. On a shelf rests a tidy line of bleached skulls, all varied in size, overlooking the whole gory scene like gaping sentinels, posed between jars of organs, all suspended in some clear, preservative fluid. There are more organs than bodies—evidence that this special eating habit on the part of whoever resides here has been going on for some time. My mind drifts back to the piles of clothing, the packs, the personal affects, and my gut goes colder than the heaps of snow and ice that spill into the center of the refrigerator, preserving this horrific delicatessen. 

Nausea presses violently at my gullet, my stomach forcefully pirouettes, and my shaking body clatters my teeth. I’m breathing “Jesus Christ—Jesus fucking Christ—” over and over through my shivering chin, backing away from the open refrigerator, and then darting as speedily and silently as possible into the shadows at the edge of the kitchen. Hidden well enough for now, I boot up the holographic computer, my heart rattling in my neck, jarring my teeth and deafening my ears. 

_Get it together, Dick, get it together—_

I close my eyes, concentrating my breathing, clenching my hands into fists around the Escrima. 

“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay.”

Clearly, these are _not_ people to barter with—and it’s time to go. 

According to the scan I speed-skim on my computer, there are people here now, and in disconcertingly large numbers nearby—outside, not far from where we slept just last night. I rise to my feet, pull the door to the refrigerator closed, and hunching, backtrack through what swatches of darkness I find, padding silently into the web of corridors connected to the kitchen, careful not to leave any traces of my having been here. 

I dive headlong into the shadows behind a standing shelf in the room to my left when I hear the thumping of a door opening and shutting from perilously close by. Hidden in the dark, I hear the sounds of raised voices, indiscernible to my at best two-thirds hearing capacity, and, keeping the light from the screen shielded within my coat, I spin up my computer to allow it to be my ears. I watch the words as they silently unfold across the monitor, in time with the sounds. According to the feed, eleven people have entered the building now, and are barely a few yards from me in the next room. All of them are armed. Another five remain outside—equally armed, along with, and my heart gutters, two Hounds. 

The Marauders. Either we caught up to them, or they doubled back. I have _no_ idea how the hell they made it across the river. As it stands, I’m not nearly equipped well enough to confront them, or even to make a pass at defending the person they apparently have brought inside. 

I zigzag a path through the darker parts of the room, stealthily floating low to the ground on the balls of my feet, and squat down in the shadows that pool in the corner by the doorway, giving me a limited view into the room across the hall. From what I can see, there is a crowd of men, all bundled in piles of protective clothing, their faces all hidden by hoods and scarves and the dim light. They are, each of them, en masse, holding down the form of another man, this one clad in shabby, ill-fitted dress, the patch of lank hair I can see from my encumbered angle dark gray and greasy. I banish the screen of the computer, and lift the Escrima, my old hero’s instincts spurring me into action on the behalf of this victim, readying an attack plan as I do. Just before I leap headlong into the hallway to go to work, I pause, vacillating, knowing that to just plunge in here and now, with none of my usual repertoire of helpful toys, might well spell the end—for both this man, and for myself. It’s not that the idea of ten former ne'er-do-wells and one potential cannibal, be they touting oversized guns or not, _intimidates_ me overly much—I’ve handled larger gangs of armed thugs on my own more times than I can count (forgive me the ego stroke), but the fact is, I have no tools now to fall back on if things go south. And even if my history predicts that things won’t go south, there’s a first time for everything, and I’d _really_ rather not test the hand of fate with my son’s life on the line. And Luthor’s words about the Marauders haunt my mind. That aside, I have no idea if this man _is_ the cannibal that’s hunkered down inside this building, and equally, no idea if he’s dangerous beyond snacking on people, if he has some higher-powered weapon than my fists and experience. I lower the sticks, force myself to relax, and assess the situation a bit more before I become yet another treasured memory, my son another tragic orphan. 

“—that nifty trick you just tried to pull.”

“What the fuck is _wrong_ with you—my daughter was _sick_ —she was _thirteen—_ ”

“She looked pretty damn healthy to me.” I can’t see who’s speaking, but this voice is different from the first and second, from what I can tell. My teeth clench, my grip tightens on the Escrima.

_Ungodly things._

A sob, loud enough even for my fractured hearing to detect. “What’s wrong with you…”

“Rich coming from you, what’s wrong with us, when you’ve got a freezer full of bodies in there.” The third voice. “You know… just going on the evidence here, I’m guessing you planned on trying to add our pals here you attacked out by the river to that little butcher shop you’ve started up in the kitchen. Then you were going to make them into nice little Bento boxes. That sound about right?” A pause, as one of the Marauders lifts the man up by the hair. My view of him becomes blocked, as several of the men shift positions. “Speaking of that, how old _are_ those bodies in there?”

“…Fuck you.” The second voice, belonging to the victim on the ground. 

“Answer me, shitbag. How long have they been in there?”

There’s a spell of quiet. 

And then, “…Five days.”

“How’d you overpower them?”

“A shotgun. From up in a tree. They were camping over by the hot spring.”

“Nice tactic. Set up shop near a hot spring, let that lure people here. All off the grid, so you can kill as many people as you want. And _eat_ them. Smart, when there’s not much game around and the city went under thanks to plague.” 

“I only killed to feed my family.”

“…Didn’t feed them very well, apparently.”

“I told you, they were sick—”

“Right, right, only you and your daughter left alive, boo fuckin’ hoo. Now it’s just you, and frankly, I see no reason that you should come out the Lone Ranger in all this. Pretty sure I speak for all my men here when I say that.”

“Yep, we’re in accord, Chiron.” This is a new voice, and my heart does a jolt in my chest, remembering this name from the ledger. “Head shot?” 

“Yeah.” The third voice, belonging to, I’ve gathered, the ringleader—this “Chiron” character, the morally destitute biker. “Don’t wreck the meat.”

Before I can make any decisions—to defend this now helpless, desperate man, cannibal or no, against the Marauders, who clearlyplan to reverse the guy’s intentions and make a repast out of _him_ , to confront this enemy and just _finish_ it so I can get this relentless Javert off of my son’s and my heels for good and all, or to be _smart_ and turn tail and flee now while all are distracted—there’s the cacophonous _boom_ of a shotgun blast, and what little bit of the floor I can see of the room beyond is splattered with a dark burst of red. I twist, press my back against the wall, curse noiselessly under my breath. 

“Drag this tub of shit over to the kitchen,” Chiron mutters. “Skin him in there.”

“How much will this make, you think? Along with the bodies and shit in the freezer?”

“Not enough,” Chiron says. “Better than nothing, though, I guess. Feed the girl to the Hounds. First come, first serve. They’ll just have to fight over her.”

“You know, we could probably just halve the body.”

“All right, then, whatever. You know the animals better than I do, just do what you think is best.”

I hold my breath, smashed up against the wall, straining to listen with my limited hearing, catching the sounds of shuffling, dragging, grunting. My heart threatens to explode from my chest. Only the scarf over my nose and mouth muffles my frantic respiration. When I peer around the corner, I see no men in the room, although I can hear the stifled din of their voices not far off. A blossom of gore in the center of the opposite room shifts into a track of dark streaks, a trail of blood leading to the kitchen. I dart into the hall, all but sprinting down it, adrenaline fueling my every step, driving me swiftly back into the changing room, hounded by a poisonous self-condemnation that weights every step. 

When I come upon Conner, he drops the veil, and, seeing my obvious distress, his eyes widen. 

“Dad, what’s the matter—”

“Come on. We’re going. Now,” I hiss tersely. “We shouldn’t have come in here.” 

He falls into pace at my side as I yank him along by the arm. 

“Get the veil back up,” I order, my voice ragged and sharp. 

He obeys, unquestioning, and with Wolf trotting swiftly alongside us, we slip back outside through the window we originally entered through. I hold Conner behind me, looking about, listening. I see no one, hear nothing. Wolf looks up at me, the fur about his haunches raised and shivering, his ears pricked forward, his tail swishing madly in his stress. 

“Okay,” I whisper. “Let’s move. Toward that overlook. Keep low and quiet, but go as fast as you can. Hold onto my arm, hold onto Wolf. _Don’t_ get separated.”

I lead the boy and Wolf away from the building, moving as rapidly as possible toward a craggy overlook dotted with the fingers of dead trees. We keep to patches of ice in spite of the uncertain footing, and to stubby, colorless grass, avoiding snow whenever possible, leaving as few tracks and signs of our passing as we humanly can. 

At the crest of the overpass, woods begin, growing into conifers denser and denser as we spear through them. We take to climbing into the trees, traversing the woods by the stronger branches, keeping our scent off the ground, not stopping until it’s well after dark and we’ve moved far enough away from the river that we hopefully won’t draw our pursuers. Conner takes down the veil, exhaling after his effort. If I had my druthers, we’d just camp out in the trees, but we don’t have the gear we need to safely do so, and there aren’t any trees sturdy enough to facilitate an all-night sojourn within the safety of their branches. 

I set up the tarp in tense silence, every nerve ending still thrumming with an overdose of adrenaline, all thoughts bolting at such breakneck speed I can’t even graze a single one I reach for. Conner helps in silence equally unnerved, watching me questingly with his wide, blue eyes, until we’ve gotten camp set up with the fire burning in the collapsible stove. I sink onto my seat atop the canvas spread across the ground. I lean my forehead into my hands, working my fingers in my hair, willing my heart to slow, my breathing to settle. Nothing doing. I just keep seeing the interior of that freezer, that spread of blood across the floor, myself indolent, cautious, utterly _useless_ in the other room. My heart sputters and gallops in my chest with each image, my breath coming uneven and nervy.

Conner sits down beside me, not speaking, eyeing the fire for a moment while I try with growing desperation to collect myself. Finally, he reaches over, and without a word, wraps his arms around my shoulders. 

I soften, and lower my hands from my head. 

“What’s that for, kiddo?” I ask. 

“You need it,” he tells me with conviction, and, at last feeling my live innards slowly beginning to defuse, I smile, returning the embrace.

After a time, he asks, “What happened?”

I sit in silence for a moment, only now registering my trembling core and quivering hands. I draw in a breath, shake my head. “…Nothing we need to talk about right now.”

He frowns at me. “Why not?”

“…Let’s just not worry about it for now.” I look over at him, give him half a smile. “Okay?”

He looks disappointed, but after a minute or so, he nods. “Okay.” He fidgets a little. “…What about school?”

“We’ll pick back up on it tomorrow,” I assure him. 

“Can I read a little bit?”

I nod. “Of course. You don’t have to ask for that, Conner.”

We lie bundled together under the pile of blankets, Wolf shielding us from the wind with his warm mass, the fire waning orange into its embers, while Conner reads until he falls asleep. I take the book, fold the page down to mark his place, and don’t sleep. I can’t.

My mind dashes, jumping hurriedly from one thought to another, lighting on a memory, a single, well-formed conversation, held in the shabby remains of the garden at Wayne Manor so many years ago. My words to Jason, spoken in fear, remembered in realization. 

_Good people do not make it in this world. I’m pretty unconvinced you can be a good person and actually survive._

_And what’s that going to take a couple of years from now?_

The peeled, swiveling bodies. The organs in jars. The lure, the ambush. 

_That_ is what it takes now.

 _That_ is the face of survival in this place. 

I lay a hand on my head, and sigh, fighting the sick feeling that assaults me. I’m hungry—I feel it, the weakness numbing my arms, sending a ceaseless shivering sensation through my chest and limbs. All I can think on with any dedicated concentration is _food_. Hot, gooey pizza, Alfred’s stupid-decadent meals, Barbara’s mom’s potato salad, Zatanna’s homemade gnocchi, my mom’s shortcake. But for all my hunger, all it takes is one sickening image of those suspended organs and corpses to cause every thought of food to abruptly disintegrate. 

…We’re not that hungry. 

At least… not yet.

I twist a corner of the blanket in my fingers, gnawing my tattered lip. I could _never_ see myself arriving at that point, that point at which I would become so fraught to feed my son and myself that I would even _think_ of sabotaging and slaughtering an innocent group of campers with the sole intention of making them a sorely-needed hot lunch. There’s no way, I tell myself—a snowball’s got a better chance in Hell.

But, a niggling, persistent little voice snidely remarks in the back of my mind, we’ve been days without food—what will happen when those days multiply, become weeks? 

_No. No. Never. It’ll never happen. It’ll_ never _come to that._

I wonder who those skinned, hanging victims were, whether they were a family much like Conner, Zatanna, and me, wandering the wild together in search of sanctuary. I wonder about the cannibals themselves—the man had mentioned a daughter, a family. A family lost to illness, I gathered, a daughter to ostensibly worse. I dwell on what that father had done, turning it over in my head, trying to understand it. Again, I see the red, frozen, bloody carcasses, dangling from the ceiling like so much bizarre fruit. I’m not sure it’s something I’ll _ever_ comprehend. I _am_ sure, however, it’s something I’ll _never_ forget.

I sigh, a strange, sudden, unsettling sense of sympathy for these people coming over me like an ill-fitting mantle. I try to cast it off, and fail. It was hideous—positively hideous, sickening, wholly aberrant, entirely wrong, but the startling sorrow for them is there, all the same. 

I look down at Conner, slumbering in the crook of my arm, mostly covered up by the blanket. 

So many uncertainties. 

What if we’re without food for another day, and another after that, and still another after that?

What then? 

Could I really pretend that I would be so different from this desperate father, when I’ve not _truly_ walked two moons in his moccasins? It’s fitting, somehow, that the aphorism that birthed the book my son reads now is nibbling at the edges of my mind, reminding me of its relevance. For all I know, the food in the pantry he’d pilfered from his victims. Years ago, I’d never have experienced even a lick of sympathy for this sick soul. And now, I’m _sad_ for him, whether I want to be or not.

I rest a hand on Conner’s hair, heave another sigh, my heart a dead weight in my chest. I gaze up at the surface of the tarp, shift my gaze, and watch the snow as it sneaks through the pine branches overhead. I listen to the comforting sounds of the fire, Wolf’s light snoring, the boy’s even, rhythmic breathing. I tune into these sounds, these images, and inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Trying to let go of the sounds and images of this awful day.

However much sympathy I might feel now for that man, however guilt-ridden I am that I failed to help him, I still don’t feel… _clemency_. I don’t relate. I remain no more sure that I could kill to feed my son and keep him alive, or even comprehend such a thing, than I am that I could use that syringe on him. Like Sawyer. 

Again. I just don’t know. 

I grit my teeth, abruptly resolved.

 _I will_ never _be like them,_ I vow, making a pact in this moment with myself. _I will_ always _turn something up. The right thing. The right way. I’ll_ never _let it come to that._

_I will never harm another human being like that. Least of all my son. Never._


	9. It Scorns to Bear Another Hue

The hunger draws my son out of his sleep before morning can beckon us in its hood of bleary fatigue and shaking limbs. 

I’m so weak I can hardly bring myself to stand. We _have_ to find food. At this rate, I’ll sneak up on and rob the Marauders of their non-human goods if we don’t scrounge up something, however insignificant. 

The Marauders packed up and moved on during the night, passing by us at an unnervingly nearby distance, making their way through the graveyard of oily-black skeleton trees shuttering the rimy path like old, witchy nails just below the lip of the overpass Conner and I camped on. The fire had gone out by the time they made their way by beneath, lugging sinister packs upon wheelbarrows and carts, some bags slung across the backs of their horrific Hounds. I shifted, hiding behind the broad, jagged stump of a fallen tree, staying downwind of them, so they wouldn’t catch my scent.

Hounds. 

I’ve seen some oozing, beastly horrors in my day, but these beasts _might_ have to top my list of Top Ten Scary Monsters.

The only _real_ way to describe a Marauder’s Hound would be to tell the listener to fancy that some insane god had mated a giant mastiff with a bull, resulting in a positively monolithic, brutish, dog-like creature, its shoulders a mountainous mass of rippling muscle, the enormous barrel of its chest swelling with an unthinkable thew and power, its paws meaty and cumbrous, its ballbuster, foreshortened jackal jaws filled with thumb-thick, curling teeth. A thin, coarse covering of fur, usually brindle, sometimes obsidian, dusts their skin, the color of coagulated volcanic ash. Their eyes are colorless, lantern-like, round, and partly obscured by the folds of crumbled charcoal skin that droop toward their snubbed muzzles. They are larger than Wolf, but not by much—regardless, I don’t like his odds in a fight with one. All it would take is a Hound locking those anglerfish teeth into his throat, then refusing to let go with its powerful jaws.

I backed off as the last Marauder took up the rear on the path below, and returned to camp, wired, unsettled, and entirely awake. I sat atop the tarp, shivering in the cold, watching over my son until he roused. 

We pack up, my arms numb and tingling with famishment, and then we make our slow, tedious way over the barren world.

We come across a barn, an old, shoddy thing that seems to lean against the still-dark, variegated sky. A house totters close beside, equally dilapidated, the paint skinning away in flecks of rotted buttercream. I leave Conner to keep watch with Wolf, where he stands, a form with squared shoulders in his hooded, tartan coat, his dark hair blacker even than the charcoal firmament. One hand resting on Wolf’s broad, white back. So like his namesake. I enter the barn.

A cow, old and teetering on scrawny, hovers forlornly in a stall. Looking at me with its soft, sad eyes. A scrap of hay stands in the corner of its stall, a vessel of water aside. Its fur is patched and sparse, but clean.

To the back, there is a greenhouse, small, with two UV generators, the door warped and cracked, unable to close all the way. I frown at this, wondering at how it came to be broken.

Beyond this, an offshoot leads to a coop of chickens, meager tufts of wispy feather, the beaks and feet a hair too big for their bodies. 

I keep an ear out, and withdraw a couple of eggs from beneath the skinny, setting hens. The eggs are like oblong golf balls, small for hen’s eggs, although not so small as quail’s eggs. I place them carefully in a separate knapsack, and then take the glass jars that have been empty for weeks to quietly approach the cow.

I have to learn to milk on the fly. I tug on one of the reddened teats, the way I’d seen it done on TV once upon a time, and just pray I won’t get kicked. The milk spurts in a little juddering spray, sprinkling my front and making a mess on the floor. I keep at it, aiming at the openings of the jars. I hiss as an irritated stomp in response to my clumsy pulling flattens my foot. But I wind up with a couple of Mason jars full of milk, a bit thin and weak, but for the love of all that is holy, _milk_. 

Next, the greenhouse. It’s a small multiplicity, tomatoes, a row of carrots, parsnips, beets, strawberries, raspberries, some herbs. I take a few handfuls of strawberries, another few of raspberries, some more of the tomatoes and vegetables, careful in the beds, and some palmfuls of basil. 

I notice a freezer, and, although I pause for a moment, leery of its contents, I open it. Loaves of bread, slabs of meat decidedly _not_ of the genus/species homo sapiens. The larder beside is full of canned corn, chili, beans, tomato sauce, noodles, peanut butter, teabags, salt. I purloin a couple loaves of bread, a handful of individually wrapped chicken breasts, a side of bacon (no idea _where_ they got that, but the absence of a pig seems a likely answer), one can each of beans, corn, tomato sauce, and chili, a bag of noodles, a big handful of teabags, one container of peanut butter, and a jar of salt. 

I locate an outlet, and given that the thing is remarkably energy-efficient and won’t use up even a thousandth of the average energy ration, I charge my holographic computer, which has been forced into some devolving over the years.

It doesn’t justify what I’ve done. It doesn’t even make up for it. But while the computer is charging, I fix the warped doorframe, unhinging the door, laying it flat, and then using one of the barn tools nearby to shave the frame down in the warped spots. I fix the battered hinges. I hang the door back up, satisfied when it clicks shut. It’s not the greatest fix—there are still patches where the door doesn’t quite meet the frame, but it’s a sight better than prior, when the thing hung despondently from it. I’m surprised the greenhouse survived, with the door half-open like that.

Locating the stores of feed, homemade by the looks of it, likely from the greenhouse itself, I take care of the chickens. I water the cow by use of the aquifer pump (and pet her a bit, turns out she’s a sweet old thing, her generous donation to my son’s survival aside.) I clean the stall the best I can, with my limited farm experience and the tools I find hanging from the far wall. I add to her bale of hay. For all I know, I’ve done more harm than good. But it at least leaves a Band-Aid on the gaping wound my actions leave on my conscience. 

_I’m officially a thief. A bandit. A crook. A damn cutpurse. God, if Bruce could see me now…_ I catch myself thinking, and try not to feel so sick that I won’t be able to eat and keep my own strength up. I stand in the middle of the barn, the sacks attached to the backpack now awkward and burdensome, and do inward battle for one arrested moment. I’m reminded of one of Conner’s books, and wonder if I ought to trade in all of my identities for a new one— _kender._

I snort out loud.

 _Yeah, but I lack that adorable kender charm in legit not seeing what I do as theft,_ I think hatefully. _I know_ damn _well what I’m doing. No Tasslehoff here…_

Full of self-loathing, I head out of the barn with the ill-gotten gain.

Conner’s delight at seeing the contents of the sack when we’ve turned up a safe spot to stop, rest, and eat proves the best analgesic. My stomach is still stirring, but it’s settled slightly from the lurching it was doing earlier, and I think I’ll be able to eat.

I get a fire going, and cook us some scrambled eggs mixed with a few of the tomatoes and basil leaves, along with a couple of pieces of bacon in the little skillet we carry. On the side we have a small pile of berries each, and some of the milk, which I heat in mugs next to the fire. Wolf laps up his own bowl of the eggs and bacon, then licks my cheek as if to say thanks. It makes me smile as I rub his ears. Everything could be better, given that we have nothing in the way of really fancy condiments, but it’s first-class, five-star, Ritz-Carlton dining compared to what we’ve been limited to over the past few months. 

“Prodigious,” the boy pronounces, polishing off the milk in his cup. 

I chuckle over his word usage, wondering which book he heard that one from. I produce the holographic computer, and undergo the rigorous encryption process to send a message to Artemis. Our devices are all wirelessly connected through a hot spot I set up, the Wayne Tech tools enabling them a ridiculously far reach of communication, and I don’t need to worry about things like Wi-Fi signals or internet network availability. I’ve kept all of us in a virtually unbreakable piggyback network together, enabling safe and ready communication. 

I think, so far, it’s the one thing outside of my son that’s allowed me to retain any single shred of sanity.

I compose my message.

_Alice—70 klicks west of rendezvous point. Jabberwockies making that complicated. Roughly five to ten days needed. Keep you posted. –Serpent_

Our code names followed Lewis Carroll (obviously), with Artemis (again, obviously) going by Alice. I had jokingly settled on Serpent, but it leaves me feeling sour that that nickname has become mountingly more relevant the longer the boy and I have remained on the road. 

We cut a path through the woods, following the apparent way the Marauders (Jabberwockies) have taken by the signs left. I’d like to keep them ahead of us and remain aware of their movements. Both of us are doing vastly better for the food. Around noon, we break to filter some water for tea, and nosh on peanut butter on bread. I get a reply from Artemis.

_Good to hear, Serpent. En route, about 190 klicks south. Need about the same amount of time, maybe more. Complications with Jabberwockies here also. Will be keeping you posted. No Hares, no Hatters. Can’t wait to finally meet mini. –Alice_

I half-smile, but it falters quickly. It’s hard to believe that my son is ten years old now, and still hasn’t met any of the remaining Young Justice members. 

Relieved that there are no Hatters (fatalities) or Hares (enforcers or Light members), I gather Conner up, and we keep moving, tracking the Marauders until night falls.

We settle into the remains of a copse of Osage orange trees that curl around us like bony, peeling fingers, and raid the bag blessedly full of loot. 

We have some of the chicken, salted, cooked with bread toasted in the skillet and some of the carrots. The tea, hot and bitter, is perfect against the algid night. There’s a sense of life trickling back into the body, as the sugars in the blood balance themselves. The sky above is so pristine it’s astonishing. There is more talk about constellations, nebulae, clusters, black holes, red dwarves, white dwarves. Where stars come from, what happens when they die. What happens when we die.

Spirit matter. 

“Where do you think Mom is now?” Conner asks, stretching beside me beneath the blankets atop the tarp. Wolf huddles down in his usual position at my son’s back.

“With Grandpa. Alfred. The friend and grandfathers you’re named for.” 

“Like… in Heaven?”

“I like to think so.”

“Do you believe in Heaven?”

“…I’d like to,” I reply.

There’s silence for a moment.

“…Do you think there’s a Hell?” Conner asks.

I gaze up at the sky, studying the stars, all of the maps of the constellations something new in this long-forgotten clarity.

The hanging bodies. 

_They do ungodly things to children._

The Death Shafts.

“Sometimes…” I say, sighing, and then resting a hand on my head, “sometimes I hope so.”

“Is that fair?” Conner asks.

I look over at him, taken aback by the depth of his query, hit with an unexpected pang of sorrow. This world has grown him up far too quickly.

Is that fair—I can readily tell you all of the things that aren’t.

“Probably not,” I answer truthfully. “But… there are a lot of things that are a lot less fair.”

He mulls that over a moment.

“…Is Mom really dead, like your mom and dad?”

I nod. I can’t say it. Not yet. 

“Dad.”

“Yeah.”

“If you died, what would happen to me?”

“We’ve been through that, kiddo.”

“No, I mean… After.” He pauses, fidgets with the blanket. “Like… not just where I’d go, or who I’d be with.”

“You’d be fine, Conner. Promise.” I pause, and look over at him. “Anyway, I’m not going to die.”

Conner is silent for a moment. 

“…I don’t know. I kind of think it’d be better to die, too,” he says, a thoughtfulness beyond his ten years in his voice. “If you did, I mean.”

I turn, and wrap both arms around him. “Don’t say that.”

“But I do.”

I tighten my arms around him. “Don’t.”

“I just… I don’t want to be without you.”

“You won’t be.” I pray he won’t feel me shaking. “I’m not going to die.”

Silence. 

And then,

“…All right, Dad.”

_So much trust. Undeserved._

I hold him, my grip tight and unyielding, one hand in the thick tangle of his hair, until he’s out like a light. 


	10. Why Should Nature Build So Foul a Den

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize that this one was a little delayed! :( Life happened! XD  
> I hope that you enjoy! ^_^  
> xoxoxo  
> ~EF

Things shifted into high gear when Zatanna returned from an underground reconnaissance mission (seriously risky) in the streets with an animated, loaded air. 

I didn’t know it then, but it would be the night that—once again—everything changed. 

I started awake where I lay on the couch in the den with Conner. We’d spent the afternoon working on honing and controlling his newly-discovered propensity for the magic arts, and when Zatanna had taken off with Bruce, Alfred, and Jason to scope out the mysterious “death factories,” Conner and I had enjoyed the energy ration to watch some illegally streamed television shows until we’d both drifted off. It felt weird as hell to have hung around watching programs with Luthor chilling in the same room. He had, granted, sat on his laptop, mostly not interacting with us; however, I knew he had selected the den to do his work because he was just as bored, cold, and hungry as the rest of us were, holed up in the manor. Although Luthor had a vaster repertoire of liberties available to him, I knew that he was suffering equal amounts of cabin fever and lack of stimulation. I, for one, was ready to go bonkers if I didn’t see a new human being sometime soon. But, at least with _some_ company nearby, it was easier to forget the loneliness, the boredom, the chill, and the perpetually unsatisfied appetite—especially now that all our food and goods came from the black markets and our own greenhouses. Luthor divvied his own rations up with us, but one man’s share spread out to another six people and an enormous lupine housemate made for a tiny sum.

I didn’t know where Luthor had gone, as I sat up and looked questioningly at Zatanna as she floated into the room. Her eyes, bright cyan and widening by the second, stared excitedly in her vibrant face. I shifted Conner into a tolerably comfortable position against the throw pillows. 

“Zatanna?” I said.

She sat on the couch with a hurried thump, then pressed her hands into my arms.

“Dick—” she hissed, her voice thrumming with a deep-lying thrill, “we have a way into the Death Shaft.”

I felt my eyes widen, Muppet-style, and I gaped at her. We’d been trying for _years_ to buy or find a way in. The place was like the gates of Hades—difficult even for _us_ to penetrate, and since faking our deaths and losing what protection we had, it was only _more_ difficult. 

“Pull the other one,” I said, staring stupidly, about to bounce off the couch in my excitement. “How in the literal hell did you get a way in?”

“Slade Wilson is Captain there,” she said. “We might be going a little hungry for a while, but I ployed him with enough ration points that he’s willing to let us in.”

“Wait—you ployed _Deathstroke_ into letting us in?” I asked, flabbergasted. 

She smiled, a devilish look coming over her face. “That’s just it—he has a daughter and two sons that he hasn’t bothered to mention to anyone—one of whom’s a meta living with some relative halfway across the country and all of whom depend on every little bit he can send. Even the _Light_ doesn’t know about them, which… really says something about whatever it is they’re doing with metas if their _own_ are hiding them. Anyway, how many rations do you think he’s getting, in that case? I can tell you for _sure_ it’s not enough for four or five or however many people he’s trying to feed and not reporting.”

“I didn’t even know he was so nearby for all this time,” I said. “Curiouser and curiouser… Has he been utilizing the black markets or anything?” 

“No way—a lot of the vendors know who he is. I don’t think he wants to risk losing favor or power within the Light. He might be a captain at the Death Shaft, but that’s probably not going to protect his meta son from the higher-ups.”

“He didn’t figure out who _you_ are, did he?”

She shook her head. “No, no. I had the glamour charm _and_ the mask over that.”

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“We’re meeting him at the end of his first shift tomorrow night, just as the guard is changing. There’s one entrance we can use to get into the ventilation system. He’ll show us where it is. From there, you’ll want to disable the security measures around the building so we can move about freely once we’re inside. He’s going to supply us with uniforms and we’ll use the glamour charms for added protection.”

“Roger that. Dust out, gumshoe,” I said, then glanced at the analogue clock. “Oh, jeez, it’s late.” I gave Zatanna a rueful look. “Bro time kept him up past lights out, my bad.”

She shook her head and gave a dismissive pass of the hand. “Oh, it’s okay. I’ll take him upstairs.”

I shook Conner awake, and when he turned to look up at me, I left a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” I said. “Time to head up to bed, okay?”

He nodded, and groggily stood up. 

“All right, let’s head up,” said Zatanna, approaching him. “I’ll tuck you in.” 

“Nah, that’s okay, I got it,” he said, rubbing his eyes. He sleepily wandered off to the main stairwell.

At Zatanna’s crushed expression, I reached over and patted her hand. 

“He’s almost ten,” I gently reminded her. “Don’t forget, he gave up his sock monkey only a few months ago.”

She was silent, staring at the emptiness of the room. 

“You know, um… I think I might head to bed, too,” she said, rubbing at her forehead. “See you in a bit?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’ll be up in a little while. Might see if I can find Luthor and see what he knows about the security systems over at the Death Shaft before I turn in.”

“Okay,” she said, giving me a half-smile, one that appeared somehow sad. “Good night.”

She bent down, kissed me, and then glided off in the direction of the stairwell. I watched her a moment, torn between following her and seeing what was up (I knew her damn well enough by then to know something was _really_ eating at her), and turning up Luthor to see about maybe getting some pre-op work done on the security systems around the Death Shafts. 

I ended up not vacillating for long, and rose, determined to follow Zatanna.

 _Screw it,_ I thought, _the security systems aren’t going anywhere and I’ve broken into harder ones without any prep, anyway._

I found her seated next to the window in our room, in the rocker she’d repurposed from the manor’s parlor and that she’d once sat with Conner in when he was a baby. On her lap was his sock monkey—displaced here, discarded now by our son in favor of books and drawing pencils. 

She looked over at me as I entered, and gave me a smile by way of greeting. 

“Hey,” she said, fiddling with the frayed edges of the stuffed toy.

The edge of the bed comfortably faced where she sat, and I lowered myself onto the comforter.

“Hey yourself,” I said. “You okay?”

She gave me a wan smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking.”

“That’s dangerous,” I said, nudging her cheek. “What about? You seem pretty chalant.”

She shook her head. “Just… It’s nothing important.”

“ _Is_ it nothing important?”

She paused, resting her free hand on the sock monkey. 

“I don’t know. It’s more… I don’t know how _you’ll_ react to it,” she said. 

“Oh, come on,” I told her. 

“No, _really_ , Dick.”

“Try me.”

She gazed at the sock monkey for a long, long time, and then abruptly sighed. 

“Okay,” she said, holding a hand up. “This is going to sound nuts, and if you get up and leave and slam the door behind you and refuse to come within ten yards of me for the next two months, I’ll _completely_ understand.”

I made a face at her. “What, you peddling hard drugs or brokering the prostitution ring in Gotham or something?”

“Worse,” she said, her lips quirking, looking down fretfully at the toy on her lap.

I lifted my eyebrows. “…Worse? Wait, don’t tell me—you think Oswald Cobblepot is sexy. Raquel legit told me that once.”

She laughed. “…Ew. No. But still… Probably worse than that, even.”

I sat, and laddered my spine. “Okay, I got nothing. Consider me braced for it.”

She smiled. “Well, get really chalant, Boy Wonder. I’ve been thinking about how… Well. Let’s suspend reality and say that things change, you know, like… the Light miraculously gets ousted from power, the nuclear winter ends, the ozone repair works, there’s peace for all time and everyone lives happily ever after—anyway, something like that, I, um…” 

Again, she paused, this time sitting in silence for so long I started to feel a little impatient. 

“What?” I pressed.

“…I really wish we could have another baby, Dick.”

I was quiet for a moment, allowing this to settle on the air. It _definitely_ wasn’t what I’d expected her to say. 

“Really?” I asked finally, once her words assembled themselves into a comprehensible whole in my brain.

She nodded, and sighed. “Really.”

I had very little in the way of words. 

“…Really?” I repeated, giving up on finding something better. 

Again, she nodded. “Yeah. And I’ve been thinking about it for a while now—not just because Conner gave up his sock monkey, or that he’s really getting close tostarting to grow up, or that I’m just nostalgic for when he was little.” She sighed. “I’d have told you about it sooner, but… I don’t know. Speaking of chalant. The timing is just _really_ bad and I wasn’t sure how you’d feel if I brought it up, even if just to kind of vent about it.”

I sat, and thought about it for a good, long while before I replied, with Zatanna periodically shifting her gaze from the monkey, to me, to the window.

“You know, Z,” I said at last, when I had determined my own feelings on this unexpected matter and formulated my response (thankfully something a little cleverer than a one-word response of “really”), “I’m not sure there will _ever_ be good time for these things, not with the world the way it is.”

She nodded, and sighed, looking down at her lap. “…I know, Dick. Trust me, I’m not telling you this with my hopes up or anything. I just… needed to get it off my chest. I know the world probably won’t change… at least, not any time soon.”

I smiled, and laid my hands on hers. “Maybe not. Odds are it _never_ will—we really can’t say. So… by that way of thinking, it will _never_ be a good time for it.”

She looked miserable. I reached over, and fingered a lock of her hair. 

“But…” I continued, “it was arguably bad timing when we found out about Conner, too. Probably worse, even. There’s hope— _real_ hope, now—that things will get better. Back then, there really wasn’t, you know? I mean… we have a reasonable way into the Death Shaft, something we’ve been trying to score for years, and that means we’ll likely find some answers—which means moving toward a _plan._ We know that a lot of our teammates are safe, stowed away with the Atlantians down south, and we even have an insider now who’s got our backs. Two, actually, now I think about it, if you want to count Slade Wilson in this whole thing. There’s _hope._ When we had Conner, there wasn’t even that.”

She gazed wordlessly at me, waiting for me to continue.

“So… like I said. The timing was pretty appallingly bad when we had Conner—actually, I don’t think I could _ever_ fathom a worse time to have a kid—but you know, I’d say, all things considered, we’ve done a damn good job by him.”

She softened, and gave me a half-smile. “I’d say we could have done a good deal worse, yeah.”

“I mean, sure, there’s a shitload of things I’d do differently, at least on _my_ end—”

“Oh, Dick, stop,” she said. “You’re a great dad.”

I smiled at her. “And you’re a great mom, Z. And trust me—I have high standards on that front.” I cast a glance upwards. “Thanks, Mom…”

She squeezed my hand. “I really wish I could have met your mother.”

“Me, too,” I told her, returning the gesture. “But back to my original point—I think we’ve done very well, all things considered, bad timing and crapsack world and all.”

She looked up at me, then, inclining her head. “…What are you saying?”

I smiled at her, and rested a hand on her cheek, her hair falling over my fingers. 

“I guess I’m saying… why wait,” I replied. 

Her head shifted into a full-blown tilt, her brow furrowing. “…What?”

“I’m serious, Z.”

A smile started out slowly, and then spread across her face into a grin. “You mean it?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I mean it. Conner’s always said he wishes there were more kids around. Granted, I somehow doubt a _baby_ is what he had in mind, but if it happened, I think he’d get used to the idea. And… like I said. I don’t think there will ever be good timing, so why not now.” I smiled. “And that aside—I’ll be totally honest here, _I’m_ nostalgic for when he was little.” I paused. “ _And_ not having to check myself before I wreck myself or wrap it before I tap it kind of sounds nice.”

All at once she rushed out of her chair, throwing her arms around me, the sock monkey sliding forgotten to the floor. Her lips found mine, kissing me with snowballing zeal. 

“Okay, I guess why not _right_ now…” I chuckled, lending her an assist as she started tugging at my clothing. In seconds, I was stripped all the way out of my skivvies and on my back on the bed, and in a few more seconds, she was equally threadbare and straddling me.

I gazed up at her, resting a hand on her belly, studying her body, still marked almost ten years later with the signs of bearing Conner. She complained endlessly about those permanent changes in her physique, the stretch marks, the supposed “three stomachs.” I couldn’t deny that her figure was different, even if she carried precious little weight on it under the strain of meager food supplies, but, no matter how she might have thought so in spite of my assertions to the contrary, I was never put off by how her body had altered. Personally, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. 

I gripped the sheets in my hands, leaning my head back and lifting my hips in time with her as she rocked over me, losing myself in her movements, openly admiring those same bodily changes. It’s not like we did the deed rarely over the years—in a cold, boring, poorly lit, endless manor with little to do and no light to do what little there _was_ to do by, sex becomes something of a way to pass the time—but somehow it never lost its luster for me, not with her. It had, of course, grown more comfortable, more familiar, less new, but never _dull_ or _old_. 

That’s not to say things were perfect or even fairy tale-esque between us—you spend that much time in such close proximity with someone, fights will and do happen, be they big, small, stupid, important. Specifically intended to fill an otherwise maddening silence. I won’t sit here and pretend that she and I didn’t have any. Somehow, though, we always bounced back from them, no matter how tense things got from time to time—and not just because we had to, for Conner’s sake, or for sharing such close space, or having others to think about or whatever. There wasn’t a shortage of real feelings between us and I can tell you I loved her every bit as much in that moment as I did the first time we’d ever dabbled in intimacy. 

It didn’t last long—but looking back, from that frolic alone I totally understand the concept of quality over quantity. I came so hard I about went deaf. 

Needless to say—I didn’t track down Luthor that night. Or the next day. 

Instead, I focused on Zatanna, making love until we rolled into an exhausted pile under the blankets, where we slept like dead things until the morning following. 

*******

_That night, it was windy, snowing, the kind of storm you find only in poems, the black, twisting air spiraling around us in white-dotted helixes, pulling at our hoods with ice-bitten fingers._

_Deathstroke, now Captain Wilson, led us to the ventilation system, ducking the guard as it changed, accepting the pittance as he departed._

_“…Be prepared for it,” he said, his expression dark._

_“For what?” Jason asked. “For the sake of what we’re about to do, can you_ not _be vague?”_

_“You’re not going to like what you find,” he replied. “Just trust me.”_

_Shifting into our disguises, donning our glamour charms, the handiwork of Zatanna. Moving through the ventilation shafts, disabling the security systems with success. Splitting off to investigate different areas of the compound. I dropped into one of the control posts, incognito, ready to seek answers._

_I, naturally, went to the computer systems—breaking into the data files from the past several years since this factory’s inception at a mercifully unoccupied desk._

_What I found within the systems’ files transmutated my heart into a lumpy brick of ice in my chest._

_The names of countless metas, some known, some not, all with their own separate files. Sifting through them, growing increasingly unsettled._

_The ages listed in these stats files frighteningly varied. Some children. Some as young as infants. Many elderly. The abilities equally myriad._

_Tapping on a folder marked “Status – Justice League, Members and Affiliates,” my heart sinking in tatters into my stomach as I read, the horror unfurling in my throat, visited with so much tragic information even Bruce and I hadn’t turned up, all in so precious few words._

_Aquaman (AC): Deceased._

_Atom (RP): At Large._

_Batman (BW): Deceased._

_Black Canary (DL): At Large._

_Blue Devil (DC): At Large._

_Captain Atom (NA): Deceased._

_Captain Marvel (BB): Deceased._

_The Flash (BA): Deceased._

_Green Arrow (OQ): At Large._

_Green Lantern (HJ): Deceased._

_Green Lantern (JS): Deceased._

_Hawkman (CH): Deceased._

_Hawkwoman (SS): Reprogrammed._

_Icon (AF): Deceased._

_Martian Manhunter (JJ): At Large._

_Plastic Man (PO): Deceased._

_Red Tornado (JS): Reprogrammed._

_Rocket (RE): At Large._

_Superman (CK): Reprogrammed._

_Wonder Woman (DP): At Large._

_Doctor Fate (GZ): Deceased._

_Zatara (ZZ): Deceased._

_So many of these I knew—but so many others I didn’t._

_I sat, next to my supposed “co-worker,” who just hammered away on his keyboard, wholly oblivious to me as I fought tears, anger, the urge to just unleash havoc on this facility, unable to, still not knowing all of its secrets. Sifting through the information files to turn up what the hell this “reprogramming” business was. Discovering its meaning—and in the face of this new evil, my spirit rising to the fight._

_Standing, making my way out of the hub of this twisted office, shadowing workers in their strange suits, seeking the “Reprogramming Room,” the site where Justice League members, affiliates, and all of the non-sympathizing metas turned up by the Marauders’ raids were bound and subjected to a mental reconditioning. The goal of this program was to instill a deep-seated, undying loyalty to and sympathy with the Light and its mission, to construct an imperishable reimagining of existing memory or forcing altogether total amnesia, and to impart a whole and complete brainwashing in the destruction of any form of self. From what I found in the systems, many of these metas went mad or even died in the process, those who survived were deemed “the Fittest.” Those who couldn’t be reprogrammed, be that due to a truly stalwart mental constitution, or to the descent into insanity birthed from the program, or to death at its hands, were “sent to the tanks,” another facet of this horrible place I was determined to explore._

_Pausing in my movements, catching a halting glimpse through a small, octagonal window of a sweeping, sublevel depository. Stopping, finding a better vantage point, observing this room’s walkways latticing over its concrete ground, the flooring checkered with vats of some thin, burnt-orange substance. Occasionally, the contents of these vats belched terrifically, roiling a silky black steam into the visibly hot, lurid air of the factory, the fumes ventilated and sucked into the two massive smokestacks reaching out of the ceiling—the source of the eerie, billowing smoke that spewed violently into the atmosphere from time to time, visible from the streets of Gotham. And this bizarre fluid, once boiled, apparently siphoned through various shafts of tubing into the next room, a refinery of some sort, from what my investigations could determine. I backtracked, slipping unseen back into the ventilation system, following its path through the walls, looking for the source of this odd, orange liquid. Drawing up completely short and losing faculty over my jaw when I got my answer, delivered through the grate, the disguise I wore patterned with the pale luminosity of the cavernous room below me, the size of a football stadium._

_Bodies, hundreds, no,_ thousands _of them, unclothed, in various states of rot and liquefaction, lined up in green-lit pods. Tubes hooked into their oozing temples, chests, and bellies, all flowing with the same lambent, sunset-orange translucence that bubbled like some witch’s brew in the next room, snaking from the pods, over the ground, into the depository adjacent. Running a scan on my holographic computer, my breath detained in my swelling throat at its findings._

_The bodies—all metas, every last one of them, some of them registering as the remains of known compatriots. My heart clamped and my stomach lurched to see Barry’s, Augustus’, Arthur’s, and so many more names as they shuffled across the screen of my computer._

_The liquid itself—an energy, apparently, harnessed, extracted from their tissues and fluids, unique to the meta gene, that seemingly small, intangible thing so desirable to so many of our enemies, now fatal in its demand. The energy dribbling into the vats, condensing, boiling, refining—powering Gotham, the surrounding sectors._

_This place_ was _a goddamn fuel factory after all._

 _And this—this room—this was what the file meant. Those who couldn’t be reprogrammed were_ sent to the tanks _. Not to be imprisoned. Not even to be mercifully killed, disposed of. But for_ this. _Some sick, twisted,_ Soylent Green _ending. Bile pushed at my throat with slimy fists when I thought of the energy ration that fueled Gotham, that sustained life within this sector, that fueled the fucking manor where I lived, oblivious to this horror. It came from the dead, stolen, abused bodies of so many friends and allies—and countless more innocents._

_I backed out of the ventilation system, my blood emulating the horrid contents of those vats, blistering and spitting in my veins. About to make my way from the piping, only to find that the guard stood stationed just in front._

_I shifted through the labyrinthine shafts, headed off by the guard, by workers that might find it strange that an unfamiliar man just dropped into the room via the vents, by the teeming lines of new insurrectionaries being prodded to God knows where for God knows what. I finally made my way out of the shaft into the one unoccupied room I could find, a conference room of some sort._

_I took a moment to disable the separate security systems that protected this room, replaced the grate over the ventilation shaft, and made my way outside by the means of a window. Standing atop the narrow scaffolding that lined the flat concrete of the building’s side, pelted by the wintry mix and cutting surf from the tossing ocean below, I clung to the wall, and checked on my surroundings. According to my holographic computer, even with the security cameras hacked and rendered useless in this area, every so often, the guard a story below me on the walkway that roped around the compound’s siding shuffled by, and a glaring searchlight swept about me. I couldn’t alert my companions without potentially compromising their positions, so I just prayed I wouldn’t die, and set to the task at hand. At this point, I didn’t care if traces of our having been there were found if one of us forgot to reinstate the security systems before evacuating. In fact, in my anger, a part of me rather invited the idea._

_I spent a few hours in the wind and rain, scaling the wall, moving with the crashing water, staying in the darkness, avoiding the searchlights by dropping to and dangling from the scaffolding by my hands, a frog’s hair out of its reach, and then continued on my trek, hidden within the shadows and the constant surf. Reaching the single blind corner of the compound, I repelled down its rough, weather-beaten surface, timing my progress to the movements of the guards, and continued across the grounds in this same manner, only making my way out of the Death Shaft grounds when the main gate opened to allow one of their mysterious trucks to pass through. The timing had to be perfect—and there was no telling if I’d have a shot beyond this. I hunkered down not a foot away from the guards at the gate, under the cover only of the penumbra beneath the turreted outpost and the squall, and somersaulted my way through the darkness and to the streets beyond in the scant moments offered as the automated doors to the compound swung closed and the guards were distracted with the truck. I came up to my feet and thrust my back to the wall, and looked to either side. A fistful of guards loitered against the barrier a ways off, hunched against the belting wind and ice, not taking any notice of me in the misery of the storm. I hared off, making my way toward the safety of the first buildings of Gotham, and then, tolerably secure, I shed the uniform, kept the glamour charm, and then continued to the Bat Cave on foot, my mind pacing restlessly with the terrible discovery of so many hideous secrets contained within the Death Shaft._

_*******_

When I finally entered the Bat Cave a soaked mess, filthy with slush and muck, my muscles burning with exhausted weakness and cold, my brain gone completely stupid, I found Zatanna with Alfred and Lex in the control room. They were heatedly discussing something, their voices hushed and indiscernible. As I stumped maladroitly into the wide circle of the control room, trailing a watery stream of mud behind me, an instant quiet fell over them, and Zatanna abruptly launched from her seat like a missile to fling her arms around my shoulders.

“Oh, my _God_ , Dick—” she hissed, even as Luthor and Alfred made their own exclamations. “Where have you _been?_ We thought you were caught, or _dead_ —”

“I know, I’m sorry, I kind of got eaten by the ventilation system,” I explained through numb lips and chattering teeth, clumsily patting her back. “I wound up having to get off the grounds by imitating boot camp on the side of the wall and coming within maybe a nanometer of rubbing elbows with the guards. Did I mention I had to use the damn surf for cover?”

“Here, Master Richard,” said Alfred, pouring and thrusting at me a cup of instant coffee, an uncommon splurge. “Now get the bloody hell out of that wet coat, God knows you’ll be susceptible to that bacterial epidemic if you keep on like this.”

I obeyed, stripping to my bare chest, and sipping at the warm liquid from the porcelain cup, leftovers from a more luxurious life. 

“Were you discovered?” Luthor asked rigidly, his expression tense and steeled, the ranges of his aging skin set to a rock-hard cliff side. 

“No,” I said, accepting a blanket from Zatanna and collapsing into a nearby chair. “At least, I _really_ doubt it. I’d probably have been shot or captured if they caught even a whiff of my ass in there. I don’t even think I was noticed.”

Luthor sat down across from me, his brow folding over his troubled eyes, and folded his hands.

“What did you find?” he asked.

I was about to respond, when I noticed Zatanna. She had crossed her arms uncomfortably over her abdomen, her hands pressing repeatedly into her forearms. Her eyes glimmered and her neck strained as she stared intently at one of the computer screens. All at once, from the evidence room, I heard Jason’s quickly rising voice, its tenor shrill and grating, and then Bruce’s smooth baritone, intoning deep and thunderous, mixing with the former’s, as they argued about something indeterminate. I couldn’t make out what they were yelling about, but from what I could hear, Jason was livid. 

I pressed my hands into my forehead, assailed now with the fresh, grasping memory of all of the gutwrenching horrors I’d witnessed within the Death Shaft, the desecrated bodies, treated with less respect even than the lifeless fossil fuels of the past, so many missing comrades now confirmed dead—dead and defiled. 

“They’re all dead,” I breathed, all at once overcome, pushing my fingers into my eyes, scarcely staying the cloudburst of overwrought weeping at the memory of all of the familiar names that had shown up in the stats file and on my own holographic computer. “All of them, all of the metas, they’re all dead.”

Just like that, Zatanna fell into a chair, and just started bawling. I looked over at her, my own overload of emotions briefly forgotten, and leaned toward her.

“Zatanna, what happened?” I said, and when she shook her head, I reached over and gave her arm a bit of an encouraging shake. “What’d you find?”

“It’s not just the metas we knew about, not just the Leaguers that have gone missing, it’s all of them, _all_ the people they’ve snatched off the streets. The Light’s been boiling former Leaguers—meta-humans, like _Barry_ —and all the metas they’ve taken down into some weird soup to extract the energy inherent in their meta-genes. _That’s_ how they’ve been supplying the earth with power. _That’s_ where all of the electricity is coming from. _That’s_ what the ‘Death Shaft’ is.”

“I know, Zatanna, I saw it.”

She vehemently shook her head. “ _Did_ you? I’m pretty sure you didn’t see the rest of it, Dick. Did you see what they do to the _kids?_ The ones they’ve taken for ‘fostering purposes?’”

I, too, shook my head, and stared at her, a sick feeling that had become too familiar over the past several years squirming in my abdominals. My voice went gruff as my teeth involuntarily clenched. “The meta kids? They’re boiling them down, too?”

She swiped at her cheeks. “No. Not them. It’s _worse._ One meta-gene supplies an absolutely tremendous amount of energy, when harnessed right. They don’t need any more metas than the ones they’ve already boiled into goo. It’s a gene that somehow still harbors latent energy even when the body itself is dead. No—they’ve been taking the kids that they can’t brainwash, the ones they can’t control, the wild cards, and they’ve been _experimenting_ on them, trying to figure out how to separate the properties of the gene, and God only knows why. So they can implant whatever properties they want in people they _choose,_ or manufacture the gene’s potential energy components, or to weaponize it mechanically—the possibilities just go on and on.” She eyed me. “It’s _not_ a kind process, Dick. We could hear the kids screaming through the doors.” Tears dropped down her colorless cheeks with increasing speed. “Bruce wouldn’t permit any action, said we were unprepared and we needed to regroup with the information, and _then_ we could move when we were prepped and had a plan. I _got_ what he was saying, but—” Her fists clenched. “Damned if I didn’t want to just bust in there with Jason and—and— _hurt_ them. All of them. I’d _hurt_ them, and I’d take in _all_ of those kids.” She sat rigid, her eyes staring still wider. “How could anyone _do_ that to them? To children? _Children,_ Dick!”

I shook my head, past the point of any feeling now. “They don’t care,” I said numbly. “They just don’t care. That’s what it is, Zatanna. Their lives have no more value to them than mud, just what they offer.” 

Zatanna’s voice shook. “Dick, you know Conner has the gene. The meta-gene. Magic is a meta-gene. And magic isn’t like an ethnic heritage—it doesn’t divide through generations; either it’s passed on in its entirety, or it’s not. And we both know now he has it.” Tears streamed from her huge eyes. 

“They won’t take him,” I hissed fiercely, my gut stirring even as my spirit, again, rose to the occasion. “They _won’t_. I’d see myself killed first.” 

“So would I,” Zatanna said, her voice every bit as fierce, tears streaming from her huge eyes. “If they ever so much as _tried_ to take him, Dick—I wouldn’t even hesitate—I’d kill them. I’d _kill_ them. _I’d_ _kill every last one of them.”_

“It won’t come to that,” I said, my speech reflexive and jerky. In the split seconds between saying that, and Zatanna speaking again, a thought whispered into my brain, one that chilled me to the nuclei of my bone marrow before it dissipated again into the amorphous mist of unformed thought— _What if it does come to that? Will she hesitate?_

_Will I?_

“But what if they find out about him? What if they’ve been tracking magical activity and they come after us because my veils haven’t been strong enough? Dick, I’ve been scared since the day I found out I was pregnant—I’m _terrified_ now _._ What we talked about and did last night—that was a _huge_ mistake.” 

I didn’t even care if Lex or Alfred picked up on that. “They won’t find out about him—you’ve got enough dynamite for ten sorcerers, your veils will hold. And that aside, don’t forget, everybody thinks we’re dead and it’s not like we mass emailed the Light with a birth announcement.” I paused, and passed a distressed hand over my face. “God—how long do they really think they’re going to get away with stealing meta-kids off the streets?” My voice rose. “I mean, come _on—_ they _had_ to know this would be the one thing that shoved people over the edge.” I turned on Lex. “Luthor, did you know about this?”

He was silent. 

“Did you?” I asked, lunging toward him, stopping just short of him, my stance at the ready.

“I did,” he said levelly, his voice resigned. 

It took every ounce of restraint not to grab him by the throat. “Start talking, you bald-pated, two-faced fuck,” I hissed.

“Why were you silent on this?” Alfred demanded. 

Luthor was quiet a moment, contemplating his cup of coffee.

“There was no point in telling you,” he said.

“Of _course_ there was a point!” Zatanna exclaimed. “Luthor, you’ve lived in this house— _with us—_ our _ally—_ for almost two years now! _How_ could you not tell us?”

“No, there wasn’t,” he said. “There is no chance of raiding that place—none. There is no attacking it. You’d be hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned, and overpowered.”

“Bullshit,” I hissed.

“No,” said Lex. He shook his head. “I’m sorry I withheld that information. But unless you were able to conjure an army tenfold the size of your former League within two years, there was no chance of shutting that place down. All that would have happened is that you’d have been compromised—again—and any stragglers from the League or meta population you _could_ cobble together would die or be sent to reconditioning. And I’m aware of your past patterns—you’d _never_ sit on your hands with this knowledge. Nothing I could say would sway you from moving in on that compound. And sacrificing yourselves to that mission would serve absolutely _no_ purpose in the end and only hinder our cause.”

“That’s fairly pessimistic,” said Alfred. “Considering that this group has often accomplished more difficult tasks.”

“Name one,” Lex snapped. “I’m sorry, but I’m not about to risk what little chances our future uprising has on the _very_ poor temper and positively _antediluvian_ morality of your two compatriots in the next room.”

“You should have told us,” Zatanna said. “Damn it, Lex, you _betrayed_ us!”

Luthor shook his head. “What good would it have done? What good is it going to do you now? What are you planning on doing with this information? Do you truly feel you can succeed in raiding that place, organizing a jail break, re-reprogramming the brainwashed metas? All five of you? Oh, I’m sorry, unless you brought your son along, which is typical of your MO—not that one child would provide enough muscle to guarantee a successful mission. Not to mention… shutting down the fuel factory would spell death for a vast many inhabitants of the Gotham Regional. I didn’t betray anyone.”

“At least the people will know,” I said hotly.

“Know what?” Luthor asked wryly. “Tell me. What will they know?” 

I got angry. “The _truth.”_

“What truth? A good lot of them are anti-Sam and anti-meta, anyway. I promise that nothing of any consequence is going to come of them knowing, just like nothing is going to come of you knowing.”

“That’s not fair,” Zatanna retorted. “If we can find enough sympathizers to rise up with us, gather our team in one place—” 

“You would need to amass sympathizers from ten Gothams, Miss Zatara. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. You do _not_ have the resources you once did. I’m sorry that I was not honest with you, I _truly_ am, but I know a losing battle when I see one—and the _right_ time to tell you that this would be a _very_ losing battle never came.”

I heaved a ragged sigh, fell back into my chair, and slammed a fist down on the edge of one of the keyboard ports. “This is too much.”

Zatanna sat down, unspeaking. 

“You _do_ know that’s why they’re trying to figure out how to separate the gene,” Luthor said suddenly. “They know they can’t do this indefinitely, kidnapping children, farming metas. It’s completely unsustainable. So they’re trying to _make_ it sustainable. You know, clean energy, enough for all, by extracting the genes from metas in a way that I’m sure eventually won’t even be painful, let alone fatal.”

“It sounds like you’re justifying what they’re doing,” Zatanna bristled. 

“Not in the least,” said Luthor. “This is something I’ve _never_ agreed with my partners in the Light on. That, though, is neither here nor there. The thing is… for now, we can consider ourselves in check. Not checkmate—not yet. But check? Beyond a doubt. They’ve essentially farmed enough energy to last them the time it takes to perfect that process, and they’ve also gotten effectively rid of the pesky Justice League and the protection of humanity that stalls evolution once and for all in the meantime.”

“The hell they have,” I growled. “Any person on this earth who gives a damn about the sanctity of life is still breathing—there’ll be a League.”

Luthor nodded. “I’m counting on it. Don’t think I _want_ you to plant your asses and bury your heads and just sit there and let this go on,” he said. “But you _need_ to be made truly aware of what we’re up against—and you _need_ to formulate a real plan, and a real, viable offensive. Acting now will only spell failure at best—and disaster at worst.”

There was silence, as the argument in the evidence room culminated into the startling report of a slamming door. Jason stormed past us without a single glance. I sighed, and rested my head on my hand. 

“I can’t stand sitting around here,” I said. “Not when I know what’s going on in that place.”

“You won’t have to,” said Luthor. “It may be time to convene with your old teammates.”

“To start the uprising?” Zatanna asked.

Luthor nodded. “At least to start planting the seeds.”

I stood. “I’ll put the word out.”

*******

Conner, in spite of his protests that he was fine on his own, slept in our bed that night, resting between us both. I lay on my back, not sleeping, listening to Zatanna’s uneven breathing as she restlessly dozed beside our son. 

I knew Barry, Arthur, Augustus, so many others had been missing. I had always done my damnedest not to think about it too much beyond seeking their whereabouts. Barry, being Wally’s uncle, had kind of been one to me, too, as such. _You’re family, bro,_ Wally had always said, and on more than one occasion, Barry had beamed his familiar grin and nodded his accord at this assessment. In the moments of sudden anxiety that seized me occasionally like so many massive coronaries in the years since the appearance of the Horsemen, of course I had entertained the possibility that Barry was dead, but like this—boiled saucier style into energy gloop—never like this. My throat burned and grew thick and stiff. I felt sick, and for the barest moment, envied my dead friends. 

That didn’t last long. 

There was a deep, thunderous boom that set the manor shuddering atop its foundations and woke Zatanna and Conner, then another that brought two framed pictures down from where they stood on the shelf near the window, and still another that dislodged the mirror from the dresser and shattered it in a breath. Conner gasped and reached out fearfully to both Zatanna and me, and before either of us could react or piece together what was happening, Bruce’s voice exploded into the room over the now rarely-used intercom system. 

“Get to the Cave— _now_ ,” he barked.

I took Conner by the arm and raced out of the room, Zatanna hot on our heels. 

As we pounded in our stocking feet through the manor, the booms continued, each one growing louder and more seismic than the last, forcing paintings from walls and vases and knickknacks to floors. I nearly lost hold of Conner’s arm and Zatanna leapt and shrieked as one particularly tremendous jolt toppled an heirloom marble statue deafeningly to the ground, where it smashed to powder and rubble not an inch from us. I yanked Conner up, carrying him now at my side like he was a toddler. The boy clung to me, his arms strangulating rip cord-tight around my neck, the now pronounced heft of his ten years weightless as we dashed through the halls.

Making our way into the relative safety of the Bat Cave, we found Bruce, Alfred, and Luthor already there. 

“Where’s Jay?” I asked breathlessly, absently lowering Conner, who clung to my arm in his terror.

“Gone,” Bruce stated, his voice thick and husky. His shoulders were drawn tense under his white shirt, his hands repeatedly flexing into fists and then relaxing.

“What’s happening?” Zatanna queried, her face bloodless and pinched in the low light of the candles flickering in the darkness of the cave. 

“We’ve been had,” Luthor said. “All of us. Gotham’s under attack.”

“Wait—how? Why?” I asked, my brain racing too quickly for my words to keep up and form proper, more appropriate questions. 

“Jason threw on his Red Hood guise and stormed the factory,” said Luthor. 

“Oh, God,” Zatanna breathed.

“Was he captured?” I asked.

Silence. 

“Was he?” I demanded. 

“He was,” said Bruce, his voice all at once drained, frightened, angry, and overwhelmingly desolate. “He was hopelessly outnumbered and surrounded. Even fighting his ass off tooth and nail and using every weapon and round of ammo he had, he didn’t stand a chance.” 

“We have to get him out,” Zatanna hissed. “We have to get him _out_! Why are we just _standing_ here?”

“There is no point, Miss Zatanna,” Alfred said quietly, his tones mirroring Bruce’s, and his words eerily final.

Everything in my core went cold. “Has there been word from him? I mean—did he escape? Is that why they’re bombing the city? To draw him out?” I asked rapid-fire, looking up with dread as a particularly violent tremor shook a crumbling of debris loose from the cave’s ceiling. “They wouldn’t bomb the city if they killed him—they’d just send the Marauders out looking for more Sams.”

Bruce was silent, his shoulders hunched, his gaze fixed on the ground. My grasping words rang pathetic in my own ears.

“Dad?” Conner interrupted. “Dad, what’s happening?”

“Shh,” I told him, resting a hand on the back of his neck. Zatanna reached over and rubbed his back with her palm. 

“It’s not just your friend Jason Todd, Mr. Grayson,” said Luthor, his voice low and tense. “We’ve been compromised. They’re looking for _us_ now.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Luthor—you telling me Jason gave us up?” I snarled, lashing out in a moment of bone-rattling fear.

He looked helplessly at me. 

“There’s _no_ way,” I said. “Not him. Not a chance in hell.”

“He didn’t have to,” said Luthor wearily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “They got Ma’alef’ak on the job. They extracted everything they needed from him.”

My heart skipped and fell into my gut, my chest vibrating with such force I thought my molecules would separate. I knew what a Martian on the job meant—I knew _too_ well what that meant. My cheeks flushed hot and my hands went to ice. Sweat tingled at my hairline and snaked down my back. My skin all at once constricted and felt leathery, stiffly wrapped around and crackling against my shaking muscles. 

“Oh, no,” Zatanna breathed, her hand going to her mouth, her shoulders stooping, her eyes wide as ever in her translucent, ghost-like face. 

“I’m afraid so, Miss Zatara,” said Luthor. “I’m sorry.”

“Still… We can’t… Are we just going to _leave_ him there?” I asked desperately.

“There’s no choice, Dick,” said Lex, in a strange moment of rapport. “The Marauders, enforcers, the Light—they’re all coming as we speak. There’s no time to go off on cockamamie rescue missions for a man past saving.”

“So what are we supposed to do now, then?” I asked. “Do we just hunker down in here like a bunch of moles and wait this out or—” 

I about cracked my head on the ceiling when I leapt at the resounding echo of thumps and voices screeching over the battery-powered intercom security monitoring system wired throughout the cave. 

Enforcers, Marauders, goons from the Light—they were inside the manor.

Conner whipped his head around to look at the intercom. “Dad?”

“I guess that answers my question,” I said. 

“Hope you have those emergency travel packs ready,” said Luthor, moving toward the storeroom. Bruce nodded, and Lex continued. “Then get them, and once the manor is clear, _go_. You know if you get made I can’t protect you anymore.”

“What about you?” asked Bruce.

“I have my own safe house that carries not even a _trace_ of existence—so I’ll be headed there and as soon as it’s safe, I’ll be in touch. As for you, you get out, and _don’t_ look back.”

When we reached the storeroom, there was a _bang_ and _shoomp_ , an ear-cracking clattering, and then, all at once, the voices rang clear, echoing all around us.

We, all of us, froze.

“They’re in the cave,” Bruce whispered.


	11. A Wilderness of Tigers

_Cold. So cold._

_Sloshing through half-frozen mires of slush and ice, constantly buffeted by the frigid, violent winds. Freezing rain falling to cake the mangy trees in sparkling crystal and litter our clothes with little silver frostlets. Actually finding the wet chill of the vista beautiful in its gleaming sheaf of ice. Following the Marauders’ trail, careful to keep enough distance between them and us._

_Keeping on in this way, fighting the eternal chest cold I’ve had for months, my lungs burning and wheezing, my legs tottering like neoprene under my weight, until night descends._

_Wolf slumping against a tree. Conner slumping with him. Wishing to God I could do the same, but needing to set up camp before we all drop like floating objects finally meeting their first gravitational pull._

_*******_

I can’t help but notice that Conner seems off, resting against Wolf’s shrunken haunches as I set up camp. I keep an eye on him, as I lay down the tarp, then set up the second to craft a bit of a shoddy lean-to against the stark corpse of an upturned tree. Not far off, the water rushes audibly, its busy chattering mingling with the lonesome keening of the wind. The boy huddles down into Wolf’s damp, soot-grimed fur, leaning his dark head against the vast, silvery shoulder. Again, so like his namesake. 

We’re downwind of the direction the Marauders went, and only a few days from the rendezvous point. Weeks of travel have worn on us. Wolf looks daubed and bedraggled, all the soft luxury of his heavy coat a thing of the past. Conner sketches a skinny form that is all too reminiscent of a mop, with his thin body topped by his thick hair. 

I get a fire going, careful to keep it hot and low, to minimize smoke. Feeling jumpy, camping in such a bare area, I think to myself that I’ll have to turn up some materials in the next town we come across to craft some primitive versions of our lost weapons. Conner doesn’t speak, just rests against Wolf. When I pause in what I’m doing, I get a better look at him in the firelight. 

The same misgivings I’d had just before we lost his mom steal over me like a rapidly descending shutter of dread, and I kneel down beside him.

“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice low, “you okay, kiddo?”

I yank my glove off to lay a hand on his forehead, and my heart stalls like a failed engine in my chest. The flesh is burning hot under my palm. His eyes, when they turn to look at me, are dazed and glassy. 

“Oh, God,” I breathe, before I can stop myself. 

_OhpleaseGodno._

“Dad,” he mumbles. “I don’t feel very good.”

I catch the flow of vomit in my palm as he gets sick, expelling all thin, whitish water. I scrub my hand in a patch of snow when he finishes, and then I wrap him up tight in a blanket. Brutally reminded of his babyhood, I encourage him to lean his bundled form against Wolf, who curls protectively around him. We have no medicine. Goddamn river.

My hands shake as I melt and filter ice-crusted snow. I take the brew to Conner, and although he resists, I encourage him to sip at it. 

“It’s going to be fine,” I tell him repeatedly. “You’ll be fine.”

He passes out with his head in my lap as I sit with my back to Wolf’s shoulder. He’s like a furnace—burning hot against my side, staying my own shivering in the arctic chill. I’d rather freeze than be kept warm in this way. Looking down, I observe him; his skin is drained and translucent, with big, violent red splotches at the cheeks. Although he shakes and chatters in his sleep, he’s quickly soaking through with sweat. I move to strip him down, and then wrap him in a dry blanket. Ensuring that he’s comfortable enough for the time being, I drench an unused tee in the freezing rain, and lay it on his forehead. I lean back, and work my fingers in my son’s impressive shock of sweat-dampened hair. Unable to stop myself, I start crying. I swear to God all I’ve done since the Horsemen came is cry. 

My head sinks heavily against Wolf’s shoulder, and I do my best to get it together. _Conner cannot wake up and see you like this_. I hold my breath, even as the tears stream down my cheeks, and wait for my heart to slow.

I eventually stop crying, slowly drawing in one breath, then another. I don’t sleep, and I won’t. I just sit, with Wolf to my back, and my son lying across my lap. 

*******

_Morning. Rainbow-esque, and cold. The trees inking thin, intricate brushwork against the myriad colors in the sky. The clouds, filmy and dark, stretching out like unfurling wings over the pale earth._

_Conner shivering. Mumbling. Making little to no sense. Coughing. His little body so hot. Trying to encourage him to eat, and drink. Mostly failing, although he accepts the water, but doesn’t keep it down. My fear growing as the first day passes and I realize that the longer we stay, the more we risk losing the Marauders’ trail, and being found by others. But, the knowledge remains that, for as long as my son is sick, we’re stuck here._

Need a few more days beyond the rendezvous, Alice, _I send to Artemis._ Mini is sick.

_Her response._

Be safe. 


	12. Never Sick, Never Dead, Never Cold

_Voices._

_Low, far-off, but audible._

_“Who was the girl you guys nailed outside that holding cell?”_

_“Huh?”_

_“Um… you said you whacked a bunch of those Young Justice kids, years ago. And that you nailed one of them. Which one was it again?”_

_“Who the fuck cares. We’ve got shit to do right now.”_

_Going ramrod straight and still, not braving a single movement._

_The ice from overhead falling relentlessly, crashing down around our newfound shelter like crystalline daggers, compiling in diamond piles across the sodden undergrowth. Conner’s frail, meager body, so thin, so hot. His hair soaked and stringy under my palm, my thigh damp beneath his burning head._

_No fire. No veils. Barely hidden beneath a snarled, festering heap of soggy, looping roots snaggling from the underside of the fallen tree. Wolf’s nervous panting guttering as he tests the air, his head lowering, his ears compressing the curve of his enormous skull._

_I hold my breath, not daring to expel even one puff of air from my lungs, lest the condensation on the frigid air alert our pursuers to our position._

_*******_

I coax Conner’s mouth open, and dribble a thin stream of filtered, melted ice water past his chapped, colorless lips. He gurgles a little, chokes, and promptly vomits it back up, along with some nameless, sludgy substance that I don’t remember him ingesting. I’ve started to feel pretty sick myself at this point, but I don’t really register it as I wipe the puke from my son’s chin with the heel of my glove. 

When he’s done retching, I, again, coax some fluids into him through his weak, mewling protests. I listen intently for the sound of the Marauders, my head aching as I strain my ears. While Conner slept curled against Wolf earlier in the afternoon, I had left the dingy alcove of rotted roots to get my bearings on where we were in relation to the Marauders, and discovered that they were camped disconcertingly nearby, although upwind of our hideout. Meaning we were left safe enough, at least for the time being. From what I could see, several of them are also ill as my son, likely with the same affliction, many lying on sleeping bags, predominantly unattended. Likely they had taken sick some days before, and that’s how Conner, Wolf, and I unwittingly caught up to them. Unexpectedly, I felt a shade of sympathy for these ailing men, looking down at them, where they were left alone in their illness. Still, I knew I couldn’t do anything for them, and equally I knew that I shouldn’t. I then made as silent a swath as possible back to the uprooted tree in the falling hail, pelted to bruising beneath the salvo of ice, and crawled back into the entangled network of roots frozen, battered, and dragging burning breaths into lungs that ached with a chronic cold. 

Conner’s eyelashes flutter against his scarlet cheeks, the flesh of his forehead, nose, and throat as translucent white as the hail itself, his hair a blunt, inky black across his pallid brow. I draw him closer, propping him up on my shoulder, when tears slide from beneath his brushstroke lashes to trail in rivulets down his face. 

“You’ll be fine,” I murmur to him. “It’ll be okay.” 

“It’s like Mom,” he mumbles. 

I don’t answer, just hold him for a moment. 

“Where’s Mom,” he cries, a frantic tone in his raspy voice. 

I shush him, as comfortingly as I can, and feel my own stomach turn and my face go hot as his tears escalate, and he looks this way and that, reaching blindly, confused, and says, “Dad?”

“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m right here.”

He doesn’t speak, just sobs his blistering tears into my neck, until he at last tapers off into little hiccups and whimpers. Finally, he’s sleeping, his breath hot, ragged and unsteady against my shoulder. 

When I lay him down and wrap him up in a blanket, the ground rushes up abruptly to painfully meet my face, the gray scale of the world swirling around me in a grotesque, monochromatic kaleidoscope. My ears liquesce and thrum. Overcome with a watery, rushing weakness, I come up to my knees, my arms buckling and wobbling, and vomit a stream of clear fluid that splatters all over the ground like someone just tossed a suds bucket. I throw up too many times to keep track of, until I’m dry heaving, my ribs knotting, my stomach burning, and my throat burgeoning into a swollen, cotton softball. Wolf whines a little from where he lies beside Conner. Still heaving a bit, I slowly drag myself over to rest with my son, where we shake and sweat under the pile of blankets. It’s probably not wise to risk raising our core temperatures like this, but I’m freezing and sick and don’t have the strength to worry much about the details. Dizzily, I dream, half-awake, half-uncomprehending, of Zatanna. Wolf nestles protectively around us, two bundles of intense, feverish heat, inches from death, and still closer to dying. 

*******

_Jammed in the hidden safe in the weapons room, barely fitting in its confines, Conner squashed between Zatanna and me, my hand pressed hard over my son’s mouth to muffle his whimpering as the enforcers pounded through the cave, the weight of the syringe perceptible in my hip pocket._

_Voices._

_Shuffling._

_The sharp bark of a gunshot._

_More voices, louder; a violent, deafening scuffle, interminable in its length, punctuated with gunfire and detonating explosives._

_Finally—_

_A pause. Muffled speaking._

_Then, two rapidly issued, terrifyingly perfunctory_ pop _sounds._

_Squinching my eyes shut, clutching my son and Zatanna, not risking a breath._

_Hours sweating by, the sounds around us dissolving slowly into silence, and still not moving so much as a fingernail._

_Only when the quiet dragged on for lifetimes did I, alone, chance climbing out of the hidden safe and into the cave._

_Two bodies, sprawled, completely still, the blood from each mingling, no longer spreading. Alfred’s hand curled around an old revolver. Blood and wreckage everywhere. Bruce’s eyes open, staring, unseeing, the pupils static pools in the dim light of the bulbs that remained lit, half his head disappearing into a stretching vat of brains that resembled so much blood-soaked taffy sprinkled across the gray floor of the cave. No sign of Luthor._

_My legs folded, forgotten beneath me, and I fell face first into Alfred’s back, past crying, just pressing my face into the folds of his coat and working one hand in Bruce’s bloody shirt, cruelly visited by a gut-wrenching flashback of my parents’ bodies, prone and disfigured on the arena floor._

_I expected this._

_I knew it was coming when they pushed me as I fought them into the safe with Zatanna and my son. I argued, I pushed back, I begged them to allow me to remain in the open to stand my ground with them, the men who had become my father and grandfather, in my place, where I belonged. Losing my balance under Bruce’s insistent shove after he gave me the syringe, sending me stumbling into Zatanna._

_“Bruce,_ no _—”_

_“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped, and slammed the camouflaged door to the safe shut._

_I knew damn well that this what would happen._

_I’d stubbornly kept hoping, anyway._

_Hearing, but not heeding, Zatanna as she tentatively came out of the safe in the weapons room with Conner, and her hushed urging him away from the whole ghastly scene._

_Moving away from the bodies, knowing there was no time to bury them, walking like an undead reanimate smack into Zatanna, who briefly wrapped both arms around me, running one hand up and down my back. Kissing my cheek as at last the fist inside me loosened and I cried, our tears mingling, before she backed away, and we prepared to leave, unspeaking, numb under our shared heartbreak. Unfeelingly gathering the emergency packs, ensuring we were tolerably prepared for the brutality of the elements beyond the manor gates. Unexpectedly worried about Lex, but realizing that I had no way to contact him._

_I got in touch with Artemis and Kaldur via our secure line, set up a tentative rendezvous, and out we went on foot, keeping to the woods and the shadows. By the time we reached the outskirts of the north end of Gotham City on our route toward the meeting point, the second wave hit in an ear-shattering peal of orange and black and exploding earth._

_We took to the underground like a family of rats as the bombs fell, rattling the earth and transforming the air into a smoky cloud of bitter, choking dust._

_Reemerging from the subway systems when the razing finally ceased, we hashed our way across the American countryside, seeking our lost companions and the stronghold that, so they told us, they were slowly, but surely, erecting beneath the radar of the Light. The manor had been cold and boring. The wilderness was cold and unforgiving._

_None of us was the worse for wear, just lightly decorated with minuscular nicks and scrapes, after Gotham was leveled into a vast, stretching heap of wreckage. Not to say we weren’t all heartsick. We hotwired an abandoned car and drove it south until it guttered and ran out of gas, and then didn’t speak much as we walked for days, keeping off the grid, away from the sparse patches of civilization that remained. We celebrated Conner’s tenth birthday with goods pilfered from an upturned vending machine in a drafty, crumbling bus station in an abandoned town, all peeling paint and scattered refuse. This small bit of brightness lightened the somber mood a little, coaxing words and smiles from us, and we moved on in a better humor than we had been since the events at the manor._

_Stabbing southward, we ended up in what seemed an endless woodland of black, scabby trees, that brushwork forest of lore that, once it lures you in, will never spit you back out. Zatanna lagging behind, her face blanched in the weak, waning light, her eyes bright and glazed under her thick, heavy brows. Her skin blazing to the touch, her lips parched and bloodless, her cheeks splotchy and grayish._

_“Sorry, Dick,” she mumbled, swaying on her feet. “I just… I don’t feel so well.”_

_Gazing at her, concerned, dread pooling like acid in my belly._

_It’s just a flu, I told myself._

_“It’s okay. Let’s stop for the night,” I said, trying ineffectively to sound upbeat, and set up camp under a copse of dark, chimney sweep pines that provided better cover._

_Sitting around a fire that spat a pale vermillion and guttered into butter yellow beneath the sleeting snow, barely protected under the tarp that shuddered in the sorrowful wind. Zatanna frowning, complaining of a stomachache. I spared two ibuprofen tablets, and handed them to her, with one of our precious bottles of water. Conner speaking, his voice soft but cheerful, and his mother all at once snarling at him to quit yelling before he brought every single Marauder down on us where we sat. This wholly uncharacteristic display of impatient rage drawing my son and me up completely short, staring at her in frightened surprise._

_“Zatanna,” I said gently, “he was barely whispering.”_

_She folded her arms over her abdomen, rocking back and forth in the firelight._

_“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “My stomach… just_ really _hurts.” She placed the tablets in her mouth, swigged a bit of water. Her jaw tensed and worked, her neck stock-still atop her tight, trembling shoulders. Tears flooded her eyes, until she coughed, and vomited up the water and tablets with a swill of bile._

_“Dick,” she mumbled, her voice thick and bubbling. “I really don’t feel well.”_

_I moved closer to her, and as I did, I felt my heart halt in my chest._

_Her face was completely ice-white, her temples and lips blue, her eyes enormous and glassy. Her cheeks were blotched with patches of red, her shoulders rolling into a visibly tight mass of muscle. I could hear the sounds of her stomach over the pattering rain and spitting fire._

_A memory played back unbidden through my tottering mindscape, one of us emerging from beneath a rotting overpass into the small, vacant, downtown strip of some unfamiliar small city. The buildings were black-windowed, shadowy, unoccupied. Corpses of abandoned cars rested scattered over the chewed-up roads amid the trash and detritus. We kept to the shadows and alleys, staying hidden beneath Zatanna’s veils, not wanting to assume that we were, indeed, alone in this ghost town._

_It was when we came upon the fountain in the center of the town that we paused, and Zatanna, with a sharp intake of breath, drew Conner backward._

_I chanced investigation, and froze._

_Bodies, all piled atop each other in the fountain, melted into a coagulated mass of hardened, graying slime, faces stalled in frozen screams, some burnt into cinders and skeletons, others liquefied into goo._

_In black paint to the side of the fountain, words were scrawled across the cobblestone ground._

_“VIRUS.”_

_“Don’t touch anything,” I whispered. “We can’t pick anything up here. Let’s go.”_

_Zatanna paused long enough to pray over the pile of bodies, and then caught up with us as we soberly hurried our way out of the city._

_Seeing her now by the fire, where she sat, her chin quivering, her arms pressed into her stomach, her face whiter than bleached linen, my heart sank steadily into the icy ground under my feet. I knew._

_Whatever viral fever had wiped out the people of that ghost town—she had it._

_I don’t know how she picked it up, not that the how really mattered in the end. But I knew, too damn well and in my gut, what I was looking at._

_And we had no anti-toxin, not nearly enough clean water. All we had was an oral antibiotic, useless in the face of a viral infection, ibuprofen, pain blockers, homemade ginger tablets, disinfectant._

_“Oh, God,” I breathed._

_Comprehension dawned over her face, setting it ghoulishly alight and fearful in the glow of the fire, and she gazed imploringly at me, shaking her head._

_All at once, she started to cry._

_Panic, nauseating, choking, wrestling my innards and pressing on my gullet. Moving her away from our son, with Wolf shielding, guarding, protecting him._

_Conner raised his first real, extensive veils that night. We couldn’t move her._

_I did my best to make her as comfortable as I could. I doubled up and wrapped her in both sleeping bags we carried, kept a wet towel on her scorching forehead, gave her all the medicine we had. The antibiotic, to hell with whether it worked or not. The tablets. The ibuprofen. Cycles of medicating, almost lunar in their regimen. Desperate to seek any form of a town nearby to panhandle or scavenge, knowing I couldn’t leave my family so unprotected. In the times of quiet, allowing Conner to sit by Zatanna, permitting them no touch. Once in a while, he read to her from his book. I still hear his voice, so steady, unwavering, and gentle, even when he so unfairly, and so young, found himself his mother’s comforter._ Bridge to Terabithia. _Wolf rested his head on Zatanna’s chest, cozied up to her side. I sat by them all, stroking Zatanna’s hair, adjusting the sleeping bags about her, drying the sweat on her face, periodically soaking my hands in the rubbing alcohol we carried. Uncertain if she showed signs of improvement, days into this sleepless nightmare. Doing all that I could to shelter Conner from the worst of it._

_When the medicine ran out, I just prayed she’d pull through on her own strength._

_Black hours wheeling into wan daylight. Her body, gnarled in the sleeping bags, locking into wild, rocking seizures, the bloodied vomit bubbling volcanically over her chin, the frantic jumping of her chest as she fought with all her strength to breathe through the endless retching, the outpour of all of her bodily fluids, desperately trying to keep her hydrated with what liquids we had, failing. Daylight fading into murky shadow, back into pale morning. Dribbling filtered rainwater into her mouth after giving her the last bottle of water. The slowing of her fluid loss as the last of it emptied itself, the slackening of time, the telltale pinched, ashen look coming over her face._

_I allowed Conner to sit with her, one more time._

_Her last words to him, interrupting him in his reading._

_“You try so hard to act like an adult,” she told him, her voice a thin, hollow wisp. “You don’t have to grow up so fast.”_

_“…Okay,” said Conner, his eyes filling, glancing uncertainly from her to me._

_I whispered to him, “Tell Mom you love her.”_

_He looked up, his eyes full of a terrible comprehension, too mature for his ten years, her fear, realized all at once. Finally, he nodded._

_“I love you, Mom,” he said._

_“I love you, too,” she said. “To the moon and back.”_

_Wolf approached them, nuzzled Zatanna’s face, and then walked a little ways off with Conner, where they sat together, backs to us, my son clutching his knees to his chest._

_Then, her last words to me._

_“My love is as a fever,” she whispered, smiling weakly._

_I kissed her knuckles, watching as her neck shifted, her face sinking into the padding of the sleeping bag beneath her._

_We’d read through so many sonnets over the years, thanks to her reciting those words to me in the den at Wayne Manor. Imitating vomiting and disgust each Valentine’s Day when we’d provide some over-the-top rendition of one sonnet or another while the other listened, a silly tradition we upheld every year. These words, once amusing and sweet to me, now a twisting, serrated blade that shredded a bleeding torsion in my heart._

_“True love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning, Never sick, never dead, never cold, From itself never turning,” I said, the one I planned on reciting on the upcoming Valentine’s Day, my voice a husky, uneven whisper._

_She smiled, closed her eyes, murmured something._

_Then, finally, the quiet as her comprehension and consciousness went—and her breathing not long after._

_I sobbed helplessly over her filthy body, raging at her for leaving us, choking on my own saliva and tears. Weeping without cease, until I thought my heart, already rent to bits, would burst into little more than a broad, reaching spatter of gore against my ribcage, knowing that Conner waited only a little ways off with Wolf, and that he could probably hear me, but unable to stop, unceasingly, vainly begging Zatanna not to leave us, pleading with her, and then bargaining with God, sobbing that I couldn’t do any of this alone, without her._

_I don’t know how long I cried. Hours. Days. Minutes. Years. But when I couldn’t find the strength to relinquish even one more tear, I rose at last, a staggering zombie overcome with a fatigue so complete that the dim landscape around me darkened and nearly sent me to my seat atop the festering ground. Numbly, dissociatively, I told Conner to stay with Wolf._

_Marauders would come. I couldn’t just leave her. And I couldn’t bury her, the Hounds would find her body and definitively know we had been here. We had followed the river some ways into the forest, so I wrapped Zatanna’s body in the sleeping bags that were now unsafe, hefted her into my arms, kissed the soft, damp cotton of her hair, and lowered her from an outcropping of rock into the frantic, churning waters of the river below. I knew I likely risked a lot of out-of-luck civilians who might have depended on the river to filter for their drinking water if they didn’t boil it, covering our own tracks like this. But I had no other choice, not with Conner to be thinking of, knowing his protection_ had _to come first in my mind, damn to the depths the white noise of people I didn’t even know. Hating myself, I sobbed all over again as she twisted and disappeared into the crashing stream, thinking about what the current and wildlife, however scant, would do to her, and sat with a wet thump on the rock. My seat iced to an unfeeling, round lump under my weight, my hair streamed in the freezing rain. I drew my knees up, hugged my legs like a child would, and wept uncontrollably into my drenched jeans. I had failed my son. I had risked innocents. I had failed Zatanna._

_Zatanna, that pillar, that beacon, that tower of strength who had stood unshakably by my side for all those years and that I didn’t even realize I’d leaned on and drawn fortification from, who had taken every moment that I lapsed and faltered in her stride and held me unhesitatingly and unjudgingly every time I was overcome by my own demons, who had become not only my dearest friend that I trusted before all others in this world, but also my greatest champion and the mother of my son, was gone. That blade which had stood fearless between my own darkness and me had been sheathed for good._

_She was gone._

_Bruce was gone._

_Alfred was gone._

_Jason was as good as._

_Bette._

_Barbara._

_M’gann._

_Roy._

_Conner._

_All those Leaguers and teammates we lost in the Month of the Devil._

_Wally._

_Tula._

_My parents._

_I shrieked all of my losses into the deluge until I fainted dead away from the exhaustion of it on the outcropping of rock, coming to when I slid limply into the dank, sucking muck at its base. I rested in the bubbling mud and stinging sleet a moment, wishing to God my mom was there, feeling that she would know what to do, that she would fix this, as I lay desolate and without direction in the woods._

_My dad would never have let this happen to my mom, I thought to myself, full of a dog-tired bitterness. How could I have let this happen…_

_I remained in this way, silently begging my mother, my father, wherever they were, to give me some sign, some hint or another, until I gave it up, and numbly made my way back to my own motherless son and Wolf._

_Conner looked up at me, his eyes round, shining, scared._

_“Dad?” he asked. “…Where’s Mom?”_

_I was quiet, tears once again welling in the burning pits of my eyes, and sat down beside him._

_“She’s gone, isn’t she?” he asked, his voice shaking, tears now dribbling over his lower lashes._

_I nodded, beyond any real words, and just reached over to him._

_He burst into heart wrenching gales of weeping, and fell into my chest, screaming with a pain I knew too well. I gripped him tightly in my arms, stroking the heavy knots of his hair, not knowing how the hell I could ever comfort him in this, but knowing that I could never tell him it would be all right._

_Explaining it to him the following day, answering his questions through the squeezing vice of sorrow about my chest, looking over the wild river that had become his mother’s grave, both of us saying a little prayer that he poured his soul into, and I only half of mine._


	13. Death In My Hand

_The sky, a garish rainbow palette with a noir calligraphy of charcoal clouds, wrapping the earth up in its glowing, dreamlike arch and releasing it to the darkness of night; swiftly, dizzyingly, the hues melding into a blazing color wheel screaming with audible voices. Conner lying beside me in a feverish stupor, mumbling to himself, his words pinballing through my skull like spitting BBs. My stomach a roiling mass of snakes, twisting and writhing, all of them eating their own tails. The floor a littered confetti of frozen vomit and fluid. Wolf turned nursemaid, Barrie’s Newfoundland Nana. Coming and going, waking and sleeping, nightmares blurring into the edges of reality._

_All the while, certain that the Marauders will come upon us—and I will be too weak to fight them._

*******

I peel open grimy, weighted eyelids, and realize I feel a little less queasy, and that my limbs, although tight and weak, are moving a bit more fluidly. Looking up, I see Conner sitting upright, looking down at me with eyes still glassy, but noticeably clearer. His back rests against Wolf’s enormous, hairy shoulder. I draw in a breath, still shaky and sick, but finally capable of coherent speech. 

“How are you feeling?” I ask him, my voice thick and reedy. 

“Okay,” he says. “Thirsty.”

“Do we have any water left?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll filter some. I know how.”

I pat his hand. “Hm-mm. I’ll do it.”

I make a ridiculously long, drawn-out labor of getting up, the root cove wheeling around me like I’m stuck in a hubcap, and I kneel for a moment, my stomach tossing like a stormy sea. Miraculously, I don’t throw up. My stomach muscles ache just from the idea of heaving—they’ve grown cripplingly sore from the strain of vomiting so frequently over the past few days.

I have no what the hell we caught, some parasite from the river water, some virus, some bacterial thing. Granted, probably not a parasite—we’d be a lot sicker. I almost lose the meager contents of my stomach at the thought.

Moving out into the screaming bite of the thin, pale air, I keep on my hands and knees, casting about for my bearings as the sky turns wild cartwheels overhead. I wind up lying on my back for a moment, letting the silhouettes of the clawing tree branches wind in their steady, distorted circles. When I feel I’m up for it, I rise, and fill our small, cracked bucket with snow. 

When we can get enough water brewed and filtered, we sit and sip tentatively, not speaking. When the water stays down, I throw some of the remaining bread over the low, crackling fire I’ve permitted us, and we pick at it once it’s toasted up. With a wrench that leaves my throat all at once wrapped around a cotton baseball, I miss Alfred’s incredible “Sick Dog Soup,” which he made steaming, magnificent vats of any time Bruce, Jason or I would turn up with some bug or another. More than that, I miss Alfred. 

I spend some time napping with Conner, Wolf standing guard. I rise only to filter more water. We nibble at small bits of food. Days pass in this manner, the sky shedding the night to don daylight, then dropping that to again slip on the darkness. No Marauders come, although the smoke from their uproarious fires comes our way every so often. 

One morning, as I awaken to the familiar scent of their wood smoke, I find that I can rise without wobbling, that my arms aren’t laced with shots of weakness at the slightest exertion, and that I have some shade of an appetite. Conner is up and about, combing out Wolf’s knotty fur with his fingers and pulling mats from behind his ears. I rub at my temples, still achy, and set out into the bitter cold to gather snow. 

“Stay in the fort, Conner,” I tell the boy, turning as he follows me out into the sub-arctic chill. 

“I’m sick of the fort,” he protests, reaching his arms toward the sky once he’s free of the alcove of roots. 

“I know you are, but it’s not safe out here,” I reply.

“Oh, come on, Dad.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“You know, my growth is going to be stunted if I stay in there even a second longer.”

I chuckle a bit. “Nice try. But still no.”

He screws his face up into a grimace, then pouts. “Mom would let me.”

“No, she wouldn’t.”

“Fine, then Grandpa would.”

“He wouldn’t either.” I’m fighting full-blown laughter by now.

“Then Uncle Jason would.”

“Probably,” I concede. “But I wouldn’t, and I’m not. Get back in the fort, please and thank you. I’ll be right back.”

“Dad, come on! _Please_ can I come out? Just for a minute?” His face goes All Business, his cheeks flushed and his eyes vibrant. “ _You_ get to come out.”

Wolf abruptly bounds out of the fort, shakes out his fur, and joyfully prances about in the snow. Before I breathe a word in the way of a go-ahead, Conner giddily joins him, still a bit weak on his feet and shaky in his movements, but radiating a foreign joy in the icy landscape as he bounces over the drifts.

“Oh, all right, fine, have it your way,” I grouse with a pass of the hand, unable to suppress the smile that crosses my face. “Don’t stray off too far, though, okay? Stay in sight of the fort and where I can hear you.”

“Okay!” he says good-naturedly, and continues gallivanting with Wolf in the packing snow. 

God, I still feel sick. I shuffle miserably over to where the drifts are deepest. The woods are thin here—the trees dwindling maybe a few hundred yards from the tiny clearing in which we’ve made camp beneath the fallen tree. Beyond this thicket is a meadow, bare and gray, heavily choked beneath a comforter of dingy snow. I gaze at this naked oval of vulnerable earth, humbled by the danger it presents. The Marauders’ camp isn’t far beyond. My lips tighten as I keep at my task. I don’t venture away from the cover of the trees, keeping my form mostly shielded by the their black, scabby trunks as I scoop hand-numbing palmfuls of ice into the small bucket I carry.

I plant my butt in a drift, tired, ruminating darkly on the sudden ailment that about knocked us flat, my breath scouring my aching throat. Whatever we caught—it couldn’t have been what Zatanna had contracted, although the thought had passed through my sprinting, feverish mind in my more lucid moments. I wonder what it was that she’d had, wrangling with a strange need to _name_ her affliction, as though that by naming it, I could _understand_ it—its hows, its whats, and of the most importance, its _whys._

There had been a second, and about this I can no longer put on any guise of pretense, as I saw her, her skin waxing milky white and her unsteady gait swaying beneath the umbrella of scraggly trees, that I thought our unwittingly misguided romp from weeks before had, with the piss-poorest timing imaginable, taken—a theretofore hoped-for result, now fervently prayed against with all of the devotion of a particularly pious monastic. 

The thing is, and my hand falls limp into the snow at my side, all at once no longer capable of raising itself beneath the abrupt weight that falls on me like a leaden drunk, I’ll never know now. What I—Conner and I both—lost. _Truly_ lost. Whether this loss, already multifaceted, was even more many-sided than we’ll ever know. 

I draw a breath, lacing cold and gritty past my raw trachea, and continue to scoop palmfuls of snow into the bucket, wearily continuing in all those things that _must be done_ even when justified in inertia by crippling heartbreak.

I pause, drawing up short. Voices? 

The Marauders are indisputably nearby enough that it’s a possibility. My heart stalls.

Yes— _definitely_ voices. 

I scramble down to the base of a conifer not far from the treeline, hunching down in the frozen earth beneath its sparse needles. I peer around the trunk, and my breath arrests in my throat. 

Marauders. Two of them. I smash the back of my head against the pine in abject disbelief at this unfathomably rotten luck. 

_Dammit, dammit, dammit should have picked the location to camp more carefully… or moved it entirely…_

We can argue that Conner was sick—that both of us were sick—and I was stuck making do because I had to. But beyond this copse of pines and naked, deciduous trunks that provides our campsite its unexpectedly poor cover, the forms of two Marauders shoving a wheelbarrow through the snow now dot the meadow’s reaching expanse as they make their way toward the very thicket that I hide in—that same very thicket that is the only barrier between our enemies and my son. 

I can’t dart out to make a run for it—I’ll draw their attention. I can drop these two with ease, even if I _am_ starving, still fighting illness, and totally combat rusty, but if their whole posse is alerted to the fact that my son and I are camping here, I’m not confident that I can stave off the entire gang by myself in my current state, even with Wolf to provide assistance. To my count, there are eighteen of them, all at the camp. And no way in hell or on God’s once-green earth am I letting Conner do combat with these monsters at his age. I press my back to the trunk of the tree, balling up into as small a knot as I can make myself atop its roots. I hold my breath, my teeth grinding together, my jaw and neck straining. I have no idea where Conner is, although I can hear him playing with Wolf when the wind blows the right way. My heart is going so fast that stars blink in my vision. 

The voices come closer, and then, all at once, become intelligible. 

“Figures.” A deep, gravelly male’s intonation.

“At least it’s not that suped-up cholera, I guess.” A thin, wispy tenor, young-sounding. 

“Ugh. Sometimes I wish it was. Fewer mouths to feed, you know.”

“Well, if we ever catch up to this guy, maybe he’ll have some supplies.”

“He probably will. Those damn Sams always seem to come up roses no matter where they are.”

“Let’s hope. I’m _starving_.”

There’s a pause. The rough bark of the tree digs uncomfortably into the flesh of my shoulderblades. 

“So Demetrius, um… Which Sam are we after again?” The tenor. 

“Nightwing,” says the deeper-voiced Marauder, Demetrius or whoever. It sounds like an alias if I’ve ever heard one. “Dick… Graywind, Grayson, whatever his name is.” A pause. “Grayson. Yeah, it’s Grayson. I remember, because he was that circus brat that was part of that famous wannabe Cirque Du Soleil acrobat family, the Floating Graysons or Flying Graysons or whatever, who all got murdered and then that little shit wound up adopted by the biggest silver spoon asshole that ever lived. But, who really cares at this point… I mean, it’s neither here nor there. All Savage is after is the meta kid that’s with him, anyway.”

My stomach goes to rot in one breath at these words. I grit my teeth until my mandible burns with the strain of motion. My fists clench, my nails leaving indentations in my palms through my threadbare, fingerless gloves. 

“Wait—I thought Nightwing died. Some years ago, I heard.”

“Should have. We were all surprised as hell to hear he lived. Guess he died twice.” A chuckle. 

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we shot him up pretty good—hey, don’t shovel that dirty snow, go for the white stuff—and I _thought_ we shot him in the head, but I must have been wrong, because the asshole turned up still kicking. Then Luthor supposedly forked his body over, but as we all know now that was a bunch of crap and he was actually in league with those bastards.”

“Yeah, but… guess it could have been worse, you guys cleaned up pretty well that one time, you know, the first time Nightwing supposedly died, or at least that’s what Chiron was saying.”

Sounds of shoveling drift over the air, then the bark of a cough. 

“Didn’t do too shabby,” Demetrius agrees. “You win some, you lose some, I guess. Red Arrow, Miss Martian, Superboy. Got them all in that same night.”

“Wait—wasn’t Batgirl there? Chiron said you guys killed her, too. He made a big deal over it because one of you guys shot Nightwing and that’s why she blew her cover.”

Everything inside me goes stock still, my back pole-straight against the trunk of the tree. I can’t feel my heart beating or my blood flowing. I’m aware only of the tinny sound in my ears as I strain to hear the Marauders more clearly over the humming wind. 

“Well, yeah, that happened. Shot her beau and she just burst out from the shadows like a Jack-in-the-Box to go running to him, yelling and carrying on and shit.” A pause, another cough. My stomach is lurching. “If I’m being a hundred percent honest, though, Jule, I don’t know if the bitch is dead or not. The idea with her wasn’t to kill her, anyway.”

“…It wasn’t?”

“No, Julius.” Demetrius’ voice has taken on a falsely patient tone. “We were told to punish Sams. That’s what we did.”

“Oh.” A pause. “I still don’t get it—if you were supposed to punish her… Why didn’t you kill her?”

A shuffling sound, a grunt, a squeaky wheel, the clang of something metallic. “Jule, did you ever read _Titus Andronicus?”_

“…Well, no.” Another chuckle. “Reading wasn’t my strong suit.”

“Of course not. You idiot. Granted, most of us are, minus Chiron’s old man. You never knew him, but that guy was one of those bookish types.” 

There’s fondness in his voice as Demetrius speaks. I grit my teeth, my gut rolling as though stirred by a tremendous paddle. _I_ had read that play—and the code names these Marauders had chosen were now starting to make a sickening sense.

“Well,” Demetrius continues, “long and short of it is that in this play, Titus’ daughter at one point is raped by these two punk brothers whose mom wants them to, you know, to exact some serious revenge on Titus. This is after they’ve killed the girl’s boyfriend, just as an aside. Anyway, so after they’ve finished up with this daughter, they cut out her tongue and chop off her hands—so she has no way of telling anyone who did it.”

“Jeez.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess it came up when Batgirl was the only one left standing after we’d just supposedly blown her boyfriend away, so… Chiron’s old man, who was still alive and in charge back then, quoted it, and well.” A pause, as my belly pitches with increasing speed and a dense bubble of bile presses at my mushrooming throat. “One thing led to another.”

“You cut off her hands and raped her?”

“Should have done it in that order, now you say it out loud. Damn skank clawed the hell out of me. That scar over my eye? Yep, her doing.”

“…Wow.”

“Yeah. She was a tough nut to crack.” Another pause, a chuckle. “But we cracked her in the end. Anyhow… it’s how our current main man and I got our names. Chiron and Demetrius. They were the brothers that did the girl.”

“Oh.” A pause. “So… _Did_ she die? Batgirl?”

“No idea. Doesn’t matter anyway. She’s no meta and it’s not like she’s doing jack or shit without her hands. Come on, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here. Let’s just keep working.”

The conversation tapers off, filtering into the sounds of shoveling snow and protesting wheels. My heart jackhammers fit to crack my ribs. This is a feeling all too horribly familiar—all at once rage, impotence, something like panic, powerful grief, and urgency, like if something’s not done _right now_ everything will be lost and destroyed forever or your heart will burst and you’ll die. My entire body vibrates, coming alive with a vast, sudden energy, dispelling any clinging feeling of illness as I peer around the edge of the tree trunk. Right now, I don’t give a damn if I’m seen. Let the sons of bitches come. 

An image, unbidden, unwanted, passes across my field of vision even before I’ve picked out the Marauders in the clearing—Barbara, clad in her white and blue athletic jacket, her black leggings, and her blue Converse, her russet hair tied in a ponytail, her fresh, pretty face bare of mask and makeup, just as she was the terrible night of my ill-fated rescue, racing toward my unmoving form, waylaid, dragged away, and—

I squinch my eyes shut so that stars bloom across my field of vision. Still, the images come. Barbara’s nails cracking and breaking as she, reduced to the most primordial instincts in her desperation, claws wildly like a trapped, frantic animal at her assailants, her voice screaming in my ears as they—

My eyes fly open, watering under the pain of all those wounds, once skinned over, now again torn asunder, and I squint. The two Marauders, hardly more than twenty feet from me now, are shoveling snow into a barrow. One is tall with a bald, flaky pate and rugged features that might once have been handsome, but are now reddened and craggy with exposure. Demetrius—I see the scar over his eye, and feel a grim satisfaction at the sight. The other can’t be older than fourteen, fifteen tops. I’d even throw out a guess at the outside of thirteen. I know it’s rich coming from me, having been in combat situations since, as Diana put it once, the ripe old age of nine, but something about the sight of this kid, skinny, gangly, his shoulders hardly filled out with adolescence, his blonde hair lank and hanging in whitewashed, greasy waves to his shoulders beneath the tatty winter hat, probably hardly old enough to drive a car and definitely not old enough to stalk former Leaguers and “punish them,” stokes the fires already burning smoking-hot within me. 

Conner appears in my field of vision, a relaxed, inquisitive expression on his face, and I madly gesture at him and Wolf to get down, making the motions with my fingers to indicate Marauders. It’s a code we devised some time ago in case we were ever unable to speak, but needed to communicate—just like now. Conner doesn’t hesitate even for a nanosecond. He buries himself within a copse of conifers with Wolf, blending into the snowy thicket. Still sick, he doesn’t craft a veil. I make the motion for him to stay, and pray he’s seen it. 

The Marauders cut a slow sketch around the tree line, moving farther from us, sparking a feeling of unrest in my gut. I firmly plant myself against the tree, resisting the profound urge to follow them. Conner and Wolf remain hidden. 

I hold my breath when Demetrius doubles back, and walks in my direction, his steps determined and steady. He plods by, making his way over the snow, cutting a sure line toward the trees. 

_That’s right,_ my mind whispers, my resolve all at once determining beyond any conscious measure of my own control to follow him, _separate from your pal… Keep walking…_ When he’s passed by me, almost close enough that I could reach out and snatch a handful of his coat, I notice Conner has sneaked up to a tree closer to where I kneel, watching Demetrius. Wolf hovers uneasily at his side. 

“Go hide,” I hiss at him over my shoulder, my voice low, just audible enough for him to hear. I’m amazed that he wasn’t seen—and furious that he nearly gave us away.

“Shouldn’t we go back to camp? We’ll be farther away,” he whispers, his voice mostly lost on the wind, the fear plain on his face. 

I shake my head, and point back at the copse. “Go,” I mouth.

He shifts uneasily. “Dad, I’m freaked,” he murmurs, his breath wavering.

Irritation squirms in my throat, heating my face. I don’t know how far off Demetrius is at this point, probably _too_ far by now, and my heart’s going at a chain gun report and every muscle is pulled taut, big, knotted clusters of drawn harp strings. “Then. Go. Hide.” Each word precedes an increasingly aggravated pause.

“Dad, come on.”

I peer around the tree. Demetrius tramps along, his back straight, his lips piping a whistling tune that carries on the wind. 

“Conner, I’m not asking you again,” I growl, now frantic. “Go hide. _Now_.”

“Dad, you said we should stay together—”

Something inside me snaps—like some inner cog just busts off and rattles away. “Conner, I swear to _God_ —get your ass under those trees, _right now._ If I catch you even _thinking_ about following me, I’ll tan your hide so raw you won’t sit for a month, got it?”

His face blanches white and his eyes go huge and glassy, even as I feel an intense punch of regret over these words. I’ve never so much as raised my voice to Conner—inspired by my mother’s gentle parenting style, no matter how frustrated I got I never yelled, never spanked him, sure as shit never lifted a hand to him, never even expressed irritation—none of it, even once. 

Demetrius is getting farther away, his form falling into the shadows of the trees. 

“Dad—” Conner says, his voice wobbling.

“God _damn_ it, Conner, just get under the trees and get veiled— _now.”_

His eyes fill, but he obediently slinks off to the copse of pines, keeping low and quiet. I’ll apologize later.

When I’m assured that Julius isn’t looking in my direction, I weave through the tree trunks, following my quarry. My hands are thrumming. I can feel the potential energy in my arms, my core, my legs. The weight of the Escrima on my back bolsters the hot, blistering pulses that shoot through my arteries. 

Silent as a cat creeping over the snow, I come upon Demetrius as he rises, hitching his tattered trousers up to fasten them. I don’t wait. I dart swiftly over the ground, hook an arm around his neck, and drag him deeper into the woods as he thrashes to no effect. 

Now well out of eye and earshot, I twist him in a rough circle, and land a heel squarely in his middle. He sprawls atop the ground, coughing and hitching, his face red and his eyes still bulging—lack of oxygen from the neck-bound haul into the deeper woods. 

“What—”

“Talk and I strangle you,” I snarl. “Unless you’re answering every question I ask—with a hundred and ten thousand percent honesty. That crystal, you thick-ass fuck?”

He turns, and finally gets a real good look at me. His face pales whiter than skimmed milk, the red, splotchy patches of his windburnt cheeks standing out in angry relief against the blanched flesh as his lips curl back into a sneer over his brown, rotted teeth. 

“Well, I’ll be damned—if it isn’t the slippery old bastard we’ve been looking for…”

He springs to his feet, reaching into his coat. I’ve executed three moves that have him on his face atop the snowy forest floor before he can even pull the firearm from the folds of his jacket. Twisting around his back, I yank the pistol from his coat, pop the round from the chamber, and chuck both a good ways away. He scrambles upright, throws a punch; I drop, and down him with a quick foot sweep. Scrambling over him, I haul him up by his raggedy, oversized jacket, and flip him over, pinning his arms under my weight, his legs entangled and locked by my knees. He belts out a little piggy squeal, the sound pained and frightened. I clench my teeth, and gnaw my tongue to keep from bursting into darkly satisfied peals of laughter. 

“So, _Demetrius_ —you want to say again how you did Batgirl?” I hiss, tightening the grip I’ve got on him, the sound of his ensuing screeching absolutely _electrifying_ , coursing into my ears and through my veins, psychotropic, a nearly hallucinatory high that powers my muscles and sharpens my senses. When he doesn’t answer, I bend down, and snarl into his ear. _“_ Come on, bro. I know you’re into manly bonding in the woods. So, let’s bond. _Tell me.”_

“What… the fuck is it—to you…” Demetrius gasps tightly, his throat straining against the ground beneath.

“What is it to me…” I repeat in an incredulous lungful of expelled air, and burst into hysterical laughter. My heart is now going so fast I can’t feel its individual beats, my face is prickling with a blistering heat, even the roots of my hair are on edge, pulsating with my violently twanging nerves. _“What is it to me?_ Fucking—” I suck a whistling breath in through my grating teeth, and push him down, twisting his arms harder, forcing his face into the snowy earth. All of the words fly from my mouth, hardly voluntary, all on a train with no brakes, careening out of control over a track with no end. “What was it to _you_ , you son of a bitch? Nothing? Was it nothing? Was _she_ nothing?” I rise, yank him up with me, and thrust him back down— _hard—_ and when I speak again, I’m screaming. “ _She was everything to me_!”

“She was—just another skank Sam—who brought all this shit on the world,” Demetrius wheezes as he struggles to rise. 

“Ever see anyone who comes upon a fire throw gasoline on it? Because that’s all you and your bosses up at the Light have done—you got handed a fire and chucked some fucking gas on it. Punish Sams—what you _did_ to her—to them— _that—wasn’t—punishment.”_

Before he can get his face even an inch off the ground, I drive the heel of my hand into the base of his skull, dropping him like a limp, weighted brick. I twist him to his back, and, bending down, hiss into his face. 

“Punishment… Yeah. Let’s talk punishment.” I lean down, the perspiration squeezed from my wrought nerves dripping onto his face. “You’re gonna wake up in hell and _burn_ when I’m done with you, you sick shit.”

That being said, I let the _real_ straight-to-hell ground-and-pound begin. Long forgotten is my prior sympathy for the ailing Marauders. Every last one of them can sicken and suffer, for all I give a damn—starting with this one. This one. Who, with help from his demented posse, raped and maimed—and ultimately _killed_ —Barbara. _Demetrius._

I keep one hand pressed down with all my weight on his chest, and haul back and swing with my other, using every muscle in my back to lend power to each stroke, my knuckles splitting asunder his lips, the flesh stretched over his orbital bone, his eyebrow, the skin at the bridge of his nose. Teeth yield beneath my fist. I cease striking him and squeeze both hands over his throat, leaning into the pressure, watching his face as it goes red, then purple, then blue, his eyes bulging out of their sockets and rolling back, his tongue turtling from his lips, roving in a frothy gunge of bloody spittle. I release my grip, then let fly blow after blow, the blood spraying the ground, maroon Pollock spatters that further dirty the dingy snow and ice. I no longer hear his choking spluttering, his weak, wheezing voice forming unintelligible words and sounds, his desperate gagging, his pitiful weeping through the ringing in my ears. I shove my thumbs into his streaming, swollen eyes, pushing past the pouchy, inflamed folds of his puffed eyelids, pressing into the slimy, irresilient eyeballs. The joints of my thumbs grate against the eye sockets, aching, straining, until the eyeballs both go in gushes of goo and jelly. I peel my hands away from his face and silence his wild howling, unleashing all of the loss, all of the grief, all of the injustice, all of the powerlessness, all of the rage, all of the desperation of the last unending years on his helpless form. My knuckles go bloody, warped and stiff; still, I keep pounding, bringing both fists down onto Demetrius’ misshapen, purple, swollen face until the nose flattens and disappears in a gout of blood, the lips shear open like split banana peels, the forehead caves, the jaw drops slack and disconnected. 

I pound. And pound. And pound. Every physical surface of his body that I can connect to, I smash my fists against, the faces of all my dead loved ones, the rows of little bodies lined up in the gym, the words in the ledger, the old, wayward cannibal and his family, all of these images racing through my field of vision the whole while. I hit with an unbridled, bestial violence that on some discerning, detached level, absolutely _terrifies_ me—and thrills me, too.

 _Barbara. Conner. Roy. M’gann. All those dead children. That one poor bastard and his daughter._ Barbara _—_

Only when I realize that his cries have dwindled into wet, bubbling gurgles and that the leaping of his chest has fallen into weak shudders do I sag, spent, breathless, my hands numb and throbbing, my wrists screaming in pain, my ears ringing and pierced with tinnitus, my heart bouncing and juddering in my chest. 

I stare dissociatively at Demetrius’ body, watching with an unnatural fascination the occasional hitch of his torso in arrested silence, starting at the sudden suds of gore that burst over his lapsing chin. 

It’s when his head falls limp against the ground—the mangled, oozing pulp of his face now barely recognizable as human—his chest slowly, weakly, shallowly undulates, his limbs twitch and jump, that the weight of what I’ve just done really begins to settle upon me. 

I rise to my feet, my knees feeble and tremulous, my stomach heaving as I look down on the barely breathing mess of carnage that was once an identifiable person. 

I turn, and vomit into the snow. 

I can’t be here.

Shaking, gasping, I numbly stumble off into the woods in what I think is the direction of the copse I told Conner to hide in. Branches buffet my steps as I stagger, my movements watery and shambling, through the woods, my feet snagging on every single root and rock, the boughs of the trees scraping my face and neck. All at once I’m boiling and frozen, my heart is pounding and my breathing is shallow, my muscles are shivering and my heart is guttering. Blindly, I continue cutting my clumsy, half-cocked path through the woods. 

There. The copse. 

I come somewhat back to myself, and, fighting my sudden surge of terror and sickness at facing my son, I make a dash toward it, concocting some unlikely excuse for my busted knuckles, my sprained wrists, and the blood—clearly not my own—spattered all over me as I peel back the branches. 

I draw up, my breath freezing in my burning lungs.

No Conner.

No Wolf. 

They aren’t there. 

The patch of earth is bare, save for a few scattered pine needles, rocks, and twigs.

Frantically, I reach out, grasping at the air, on the wild hope that he’s merely veiled.

Nothing.

My heart, pulled into the back of my chest in suspended animation as I first took in the sight of this terrible, empty hiding place, explodes into motion with such force that it cleaves to my ribs and palpates like the wings of a trapped bird. For one ludicrous moment, I think maybe I selected the wrong thicket of trees, but further investigation of my surroundings proves that this is beyond a doubt the right one. I cast around, thrash about, roving desperately to connect with the hidden form of my son, find nothing. Panicked, no longer caring about Marauders nearby, no longer worried about long-term safety, I repeatedly bellow my son’s name, and crash again through the woods, seeking a glimpse of him, of Wolf, of broken branches, of footprints, of any sign of them. I make my way toward the camp, wildly tossing up a prayer that Conner headed in his fear with Wolf to hide in our makeshift home. 

I sob a curse. The fort, upon all investigation, is empty, other than our scant belongings. I race away from the fallen tree, and hurtle through the woods, screaming for Conner and Wolf until my already inflamed throat gives out. I keep trying, producing little more than sharp, husky barks from my heaving chest, but repeatedly shouting for them into the shadows of the cold, uncaring trees, who stand still and judging, seeming to remind me in their stark silence that all of this is my fault. 

_They found him. They took him. They killed Wolf and they took my son. They have him. They’ll perform those horrible experiments on him and they’ll do so much worse beforehand. And it’s my fault. It’s my own damn fault. I’ve heard the stories. How could I leave him… I fucking knew what they’d do—I knew it—I knew—_

_Goddammit—_

_My fault—_

I left my son with that Marauder—Julius or whatever his name was—not twenty yards from him. I left him mostly unprotected and scared in the woods. I left him vulnerable and helpless, completely open to attack. All because I was so hellbent on beating the piss out of some old, sick bastard who shouldn’t even have mattered a goddamn lick to me at this point. Beating his face off didn’t bring Barbara or my friends back, or even justice to what happened to her and them. All it did was sprain both my wrists—and have my son taken from me. 

I’m dragging in frenzied, sobbing breaths by now, wheeling through the forest in the direction of the Marauders’ camp. I don’t stand a chance fighting the entire group, but if Conner has been taken, they can’t have gotten far—I can still catch up to them. And for as much as this most recent incident was anything but a study in subtlety and I’m gasping in terror and overexertion, I am still perfectly capable of subterfuge—and if I’m found rescuing Conner, I’ll happily die fighting them to give my son a chance at escape.

Granted—there is always the other option, if all hope is lost for both of us, if there’s no way out, except for me to die, and Conner be taken. I shut the image of the one pre-loaded syringe, that little yellow, poison cocktail like a mini “Drink Me” vial, in the zipped, inside pocket of my coat away into the back recesses of my mind, not wishing to think on that just yet, as I dash over the undergrowth, now shifting into a stealthier approach, not wanting to alert our enemies to my presence when I happen upon them.

Movement draws my eye, and I see them—Conner, and Wolf, just the two of them, unveiled, walking in the woods. I about faint dead away on my feet, overcome with relief. 

Relief, however, is swiftly displaced by anger. 

“Conner!” I screech in my breaking voice as I come upon them. I grab my son’s arm in my bloodied, gloved, twisted hand. He wrenches his wrist away from my grasp, his face strange, uncharacteristic, entirely unreadable as he meets my gaze in absolute silence. 

I press my hands to my head. “God, Conner, you scared me to _death_ —damn it—you were supposed to stay _hidden_ , or at least _veiled—_ you could have brought every one of those Marauders down on you!” 

He takes a few steps backwards, his expression unusually, unnervingly guarded, and edges closer to Wolf. I grab the boy by his shoulders, and keep pace with him when he wheels out from under my hold to take another series of retrograde steps. 

“Conner,” I persist. “Conner— _listen_ to me—you _never_ disobey me, you _never_ run away from me, and you _never_ go off by yourself. _Never._ Understand? It’s not safe—”

“Dad—just—just _shut up!”_ he suddenly shrieks at me, now wildly backing away. “Just shut up, and leave me _alone_!”

I draw up, about to lay the paternal smackdown as he slows in his retreat, and then I abruptly sag. He’s every bit as right to be angry with me as he was to hare off. 

“Conner,” I say, gentling, “I know I shouldn’t have left you—okay? I know that, and I’m sorry. But, listen, I’m _not_ going to do that again—”

“I saw what you did!” he yells all at once, cutting me off and turning every muscle in my body to water with that one announcement.

“…What?” I manage, my voice mostly stuck in my throat. 

“I saw what you did to that man!”

My blood goes colder than the preternaturally frozen air around us. My heart screams to a stop in my chest. “…What are you talking about?”

He shakes his head, his face whiter than the snow under our feet, his eyes enormous, glittering, hard. He, again, shakes his head, his voice lowering. “I _saw_ it, Dad.”

“…For Christ’s sake, Conner, did you _follow_ me?” 

If there was a rug under me, I’d be on my ass right now, because it’s just been yanked out from beneath my feet. I stare at my son, at last recognizing with horror and onus his expression—fear, suspicion, anger, betrayal, confusion. 

But above all—fear.

Wolf eyes me with—I swear it—the exact same expression.

My heart starts up again, pounding, sending sick, uncomfortable flushes of heat to my face. My son is silent.

“Conner—”

“I followed you, Dad!” he hollers shrilly. “I was scared, and I was worried about you, and I didn’t want you to follow that guy—I just wanted to go back to camp, but I didn’t want to go without you! And then I found you, and-and you—you _killed_ that man! You _killed_ him!”

I shake my head, slowly at first, then with increasing vehemence. “No, no no no, no Conner, I didn’t—”

“Yes, you _did_! He was crying and telling you to stop, and you just wouldn’t _stop_! You hit him until he _died_!”

I just keep shaking my head. “No, no, I swear I didn’t… I _wouldn’t_ …” 

_He was still breathing. He was still breathing. He was still breathing—_

Conner is sobbing now, tears streaming in rapid rivulets that fall over his white cheeks. Wolf leans against him, and he wraps one arm around the great, snowy neck, laying his other hand on the patch of fur between the triangular ears, the gesture childish and abruptly heartbreaking. “We’re supposed to be the good guys—but good guys don’t _do_ that! They don’t _hurt_ people!”

My pits are sweating, my back trickling, my hair tingling. I point in no specific direction, thrusting my arm to drive a point. My voice grates painfully in my throat as I speak, my voice rising in timbre with each word. “But _they_ hurt people, Conner. _They_ do. And it doesn’t matter to them who they hurt—they hurt _anyone_ that gets in their way, and even people who don’t. _Innocent_ people. People I love—they hurt people I love—Conner, they _killed_ people I love. If they find you, they’ll take you and do _worse_ than kill you. You don’t get to call the shots, you don’t get to decide what’s right or wrong, not on this. If I tell you to hide, you _hide_. If I tell you to run, you _run_. You _listen_ to me from now on.” I pause, my chest heaving with my rapid breath. Thoughts burst into my mind, too fast to filter: _He’s right, though, he’s right, and you know he’s right, and no amount of this “who did what to whom” is going to change that, and you know it, you know it damn well—_ “Come on,” I snap, cutting myself off in my own thoughts, “we have to find somewhere else to camp, God knows they’re onto us now—”

“No,” Conner says, planting his feet. 

“Conner, you don’t tell me no,” I say sharply.

“Yes, I do! You’re a liar—and a killer—and I’ll say what I want!”

“Stop it, Conner _.”_

I reach for him. He dodges me. 

“Just go _away,_ Dad, go away and leave me alone!”

He turns to run, and I take hold of his arm, holding him in place, my injured hand screaming in protest. 

“Conner, I said stop it!” I yank him back as he gives a wholehearted effort at escape. “ _Stop_!”

He rips his arm from my grip, and bodily shoves me as hard as he can. And for as little as he is, he nearly sends me to my can atop the snow. 

“ _No_! Go _away,_ Dad! I don’t _want_ you—I want Mom!”

“Well, Mom’s not here,” I snarl, righting myself, “and if you want to _live_ , you’ll stay with me—because like it or not, kiddo, I’m all you’ve got at this point!”

“I have Wolf,” he says, although he halts in his efforts to run. “I have myself. I don’t _need_ you.”

“You try running off by yourself with Wolf and you’ll think differently. You _do_ need me. Think I’m bad, fine. But they’re _worse_ , you understand?” 

“No, _you’re_ worse,” Conner exclaims. “You’re worse because you _pretend_ to be good. And you’re not! You’ve _lied_ to me all this time!”

I stare at him, my breath condensing on the chill of the air. “Get moving and stay close to me,” I say through gritted teeth. “You might think you don’t need me, but you’re wrong. Come on.”

“No, I’m not,” he mutters stubbornly, but he obeys, and then he lapses into sobs that he doesn’t bother to muffle as he makes his way over the snow at my side.

*******

Sitting now at our new campsite, haphazardly cobbled together in a sparse thicket of pines a little ways from our previous fort, the sky pitchy dark and latticed with the deep taupe-charcoal, stretchy clouds of winter overhead, I sit, freezing beneath two threadbare blankets in the open by myself, not even close to welcome under the tarp with Conner and Wolf. I had tried to worm my way under the blankets with them, but received only a nasty hiss to stay away. When I persisted, Wolf growled warningly at me. Stung, I’d acquiesced to thump onto my seat by the fire under the two blankets I swiped.

Alone, now, with only the sounds of the mostly lifeless forest, the mournful cry of the wind, the snap of the fire, and the breathing of my son and Wolf for company, I bury my face in my aching, busted hands, and fall to pieces. 

I am not in any way stupid. I know what I did. I know that I knew what I was doing even as I did it, at least on some level. I know there’s no way in hell I didn’t kill that man. I didn’t deal the final blow, but I sure as shit signed his death warrant. Yes, he _might_ have lived in better times, but even then, he’d have been drinking his food out of a straw for the rest of his life at best, and wound up a goddamn vegetable only breathing by the grace of life support at worst. And I’d have done that to him. The way it stands now—he’s on the old express bus to Hell, and I bought his ticket and stuck him in his seat and waved goodbye as it roared off with him on it. And I don’t give a damn what he did, or would do, or might do—I had no _real_ right or justification to bushwhack him unprovoked, beat him within a nanometer of his life, and then leave him to die in cold blood the way I did. It’s downright laughable. Who did I _really_ think I was, singlehandedly playing judge and jury—and executioner?

Of course, maybe the Light has better resources than most, and Demetrius is on his way to a full recovery—

_Oh, come off it, you fucking idiot—_

_—_ but who really knows anymore. 

I grind my painful fingers into my hair, shaking my throbbing head, rocking on my seat. I should be tossed in the clink, Belle Reve, a closet, a dragon-guarded tower, whatever. I should be shot. I should be hanged. I _would_ be in some really serious shit, had this happened in my old life—it wouldn’t have mattered who my mentor was.

My fingernails tear into my scalp when I think of Bruce. Dear _God_ , what would he say, or do _,_ if he saw me now, saw what I did. 

Or… if he’d just _been_ there, if he hadn’t thrown himself into the line of fire to make a play like some bastard stepchild of Custer’s Last Stand… 

Maybe I wouldn’t have done it at all. 

I clench my fists, the cuts on my knuckles reopening and bleeding, and I grind my teeth. 

“You left me to this, Bruce,” I whisper into the freezing air, “you _left_ me, god damn you, and Zatanna, dammit, you did, too, both of you, this is _all_ your fault—”

My voice falters, and I choke, stifling a sob. It’s not Bruce’s fault. It’s not Zatanna’s fault. I know that. And it’s not Alfred’s, or Jason’s, or Barbara’s, or M’gann’s, or _anyone’s._ It’s mine. My responsibility. It’s my burden. I did this. I _am_ this. I own it. 

What I can’t shoulder is that Conner, although he’s no longer trying to build a case for immediate emancipation, can’t seem to bear even the sight of me—all afternoon, all evening, he shied away from me, avoided my touch, evaded eye contact, and refused to speak, even when I went from threatening and remonstrating to begging and pleading. And when he did look at me, it was with a humbled, dismayed expression full of alarm and hurt, as though he eyed a pet that was once loving and gentle, but that all at once went vicious and took his hand off in one brutal snap of the teeth. That trust that he had in me, that trust that I couldn’t fathom, that I was so sure was so steadfast—I had lost it. In a matter of minutes, it was forfeit.

I can’t even blame him one bit for looking at me like I’m a monster. I _am_ a monster. My son was right—I’m worse than the Marauders, far worse. I’m worse because, just like he said, I’m a _liar_. I’m a monster _pretending_ to be human. I dig my bleeding fingers into the earth at my sides. I can’t ever hold my son with these filthy, monstrous hands again. 

Zatanna would have been completely heartbroken to see what I had done, and in front of our child—as though my actions weren’t quite despicable enough. Babs would have been furious. Disgusted. Conner, as in Superboy, too. Wally would never have spoken to me again, or even _looked_ at me. I can’t even _bear_ to think about how my parents would feel, what they would do, if they were alive right now and faced with the subhuman beast their son had become. My father was a _good_ man, unfailingly, to the end—and he would _never_ have snapped like that, no matter what horrors befell him or those he loved. I've profoundly let him down, pissed on his memory, failed him. My mother, as well.

M’gann—M’gann _might_ have understood, _might_ have—

No, she would have been just as overwhelmingly horrified and disappointed as the rest of them, and they all would have been too damn right to be so. Even Jason with his game of Fast and Loose would have been demoralized. 

_You’re supposed to be the unfailing moral bastion, bro._ I could hear his voice as clearly as though he’d actually sat down next to me and started speaking. _Seriously, man, what the hell?_

I really should contact Artemis and firm up the rendezvous, but I just can’t lift the communicator from my pocket. I don’t belong in that sanctuary. Not now. And contacting her means I’ll have to explain why I won’t be going with them when they arrive to pick up the boy. What am I really going to tell her? “I’m a villain, Artemis, and villains gonna vill.” Conner, at this point, is better off without me. Indisputable. 

I bury my face in my knees, hugging my thighs against the cold and my own anguish, and then start when I hear a distinct clicking sound—right by my ear.

“Well. Salutations, asshole,” sneers a voice, unfamiliar, but known, and completely dreaded, above me. “Looks like we finally caught up to you.”


	14. But That I Cannot Do Ten Thousand More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CAVEAT: PLEASE READ
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING  
> TRIGGER WARNING  
> TRIGGER WARNING
> 
> If you'd rather not read, you can PM me and I'll happily give you a synopsis to spare risking any triggers. 
> 
> Also, please know I really detest myself for this chapter and that when I was done writing it, I felt like I needed a bath in holy water. Or a Hellfire cleansing. Or to get beaten with a red-hot poker. Or all three.
> 
> Even if this chapter isn't much fun on any level, I hope it reads all right. <3 
> 
> You also have my promise that I will approach this subject as sensitively as I can. <3 
> 
> Much love,  
> EF <3

“Get up.”

Considering the fact that there’s a high-powered compensation gun to my head, I do, the blankets over my shoulders sliding to the ground at my heels. 

“Get your hands where I can see them. Iago, check under that tarp. Guessing this asshole’s hiding the meta kid under there.”

I lift my hands and hold my breath, checking for an opening, a weakness, a chink, anything, as one of the Marauders (Iago, I’m guessing), a middle-aged man with a coif of graying hair dangling to his cheekbones and a stained white scarf tied over his nose and mouth, rips the tarp—the tarp sheltering Conner and Wolf—aside with a swipe of one thick arm.

“Oh, what the hell,” the man mutters, speaking my exact thoughts as I, and my new, unwanted companions, stare wordlessly at the little space revealed. 

Conner and Wolf aren’t there—in their place is an abandoned heap of blankets, the two bags of clothing and supplies, and a smattering of white fur. 

I slowly release a breath, toss up a prayer that wherever they’re hiding, it’s an effective enough spot that they won’t be found, and cast about for opportunities to make my own bid for freedom. 

“Pick up those packs and blankets,” says the Marauder behind me, the one holding the massive gun to my ear. There’s a rustling click as he shifts his weight. 

I’m at the ready, but sick and injured, I’m not as primed as I could be—I really should have been able to capitalize on that one shift in movement to twist and disarm him.

_Damn._

Time to overcompensate for my present weaknesses. I stuff the urge to fall into a mire of panic over the loss of my utility belt, and draw in a breath, concentrating my respiration, calming my pounding heart as I assess the situation.

Eight Marauders total, some with flashlights, all armed with varying weapons, mostly firearms, but I also make note of a bat embedded with nails, a crowbar, and a machete among them. Teenaged Julius from the meadow is present. I’d counted eighteen men originally, including Demetrius, at their camp some days before. Not counting my unfortunate beat-down victim, nine are missing, I can assume sick with the same bug I’m still getting over—it hit them hard. One Hound stands a ways off, bound to a tree by a thick, heavy chain. I’m not crazy about my odds, but I guess they’re a hell of a lot better than eighteen psychos and two augmented monsters against one sick, weakened fugitive. 

When I was healthy, well fed, armed with dozens of weapons, comfortably in practice, and had mostly only my own safety to worry about, I wouldn’t even have felt a spike in my adrenaline levels if I were to find myself in this exact scenario. Firearms are intimidating, okay—but let’s face it, most people are totally piss-poor shots. It’s easy enough to exploit weaknesses in people who can’t handle guns to save their lives, even if they’re in a group. Generally it’s a matter of moving quickly enough in the right direction, finding the right cover, and then taking the right responsive course of action to disable or escape your adversaries. As it stands now, given the choices of fight or flight, my best bet at survival is flight—I’m one punch per arm away from snapping my wrists and fracturing my knuckles, chronically undernourished and down some serious strength points, and still so sick I can barely stand, but fleeing might not be an option; at least, not yet. For as much I don’t like my chances at fisticuffs in this situation, I’ll have to try to disable my enemies first—and I think it goes without saying I’ll go in balls to the wall if it’s the only thing that keeps these beasts from my son. 

I don’t speak, watching as three of the Marauders gather up our meager belongings, sifting through the contents of each bag and bundling everything they turn up into a sack. The food, the water I’d filtered and bottled the day before, the blankets, the clothes. I work my jaw, my heart sinking and stirring in my gut as I watch our scant, hard-earned supplies, supplies we traveled long and hard for, that I carried on my back for endless miles of trekking across this godforsaken, hateful wilderness, that I gave up my own principles and turned to theft to acquire, collected with about as much ceremony as though selected off the shelves of a supermarket. Gone, just like that. Food out of my son’s mouth, clothes off his back. All in the proverbial blink of an eye. 

The Marauder behind me swivels around to stand facing me, the barrel of his weapon trained on my head all the while. He’s younger than I expected, maybe my age, with a shock of wavy, pitchy dark hair, a thick, neglected beard, an uncovered baby face, dark eyes, and broad shoulders disproportionate to his otherwise malnourished physique stretching beneath the ragged, patched, hole-bitten navy cloth of the Marauders’ uniform coat. I keep my hands in the air, the condensation of my nervous breath sticking to the scarf over my mouth and nose, making it difficult to inhale. 

“The coat,” he says, jerking his head toward my torso. “Take it off and lay it on the ground.”

“Sorry,” I tell him. “I like it. Matches my eyes.”

“It won’t match shit if you don’t take it off right now,” the Marauder says, his inflection hardly changing. “The shoes, too. And the weapons. Lose them.”

Punishment, I’m guessing. “This about what happened earlier?” I ask. 

He grunts a little. “Hm. So _you_ did Demetrius, I take it.”

I don’t answer.

“Well, if I’m being honest, I never really liked the bastard,” says the Marauder. “If the guys back at headquarters can’t save him, it’s no skin off my back. But I have to say—I appreciate the hell out of him right about now, because if you’re the one who smashed his face in—well. It all explains why you’re so off your guard all of a sudden.”

So Demetrius might still be alive. Inwardly, I let out a breath. “I’m not _that_ off my guard,” I assure him.

“Mm-hmm. We’ll see. Ditch the coat and shoes, GI Joe. And the weapons. Drop them.” 

I don’t even twitch. “Or what, BFG 9000?” 

“Or I shoot,” he tells me with a deadly, practiced calm. “With this Big Fucking Gun 9000.”

“No, you won’t,” I tell him, equally calm. “I know if you’re not here for revenge, you’re definitely not here just to shop—you want info.”

“Maybe.”

“Not exactly going to benefit you to bust a cap in my ass before I give you some, then, is it?” I pause, and allow the tension to build a moment. “Didn’t think so. So _keep_ pointing that ID Killer-Fuckin’-Ammo gun in my face—fact is, you _need_ me. Don’t you.”

“Yeah, I do,” he says. “Doesn’t mean I need you in one piece, does it? Just need you talking. You can lose most of your lower half and still talk pretty normally.”

“Learn that through experience?” I ask.

“That’s classified,” he replies, a mirthless half-smile quirking his lip. 

“Chiron, would you please _waste_ this shitbag and find the kid already? We got the damn supplies, now we’re all just freezing our nuts off out here,” says one of the men, shifting impatiently where he stands. 

“Calm down, Roderigo, I’m working on it,” says Chiron— _the_ Chiron, the one I know now to be the ringleader, the same man both Cornwell _and_ Demetrius mentioned, the very monster who tormented and killed Barbara at his father’s demented behest, and clearly _enjoyed_ doing it. My jaw sets, my breath coming faster, my chest vibrating with a sickening, familiar heat. My hands shake as I resist the urge to form them into fists.

Remembering the events from earlier, I force myself to relax before I do something unfathomably stupid—I’ve already gotten blood for her. I _don’t_ need more. No one has to die tonight—especially not by my hands, and not at the cost of my own life, risking my son. I draw in a breath, and release it. The opportunity to retaliate will come. And when it does, I’ll disable my opponents, take off, find Conner and Wolf, keep hidden a while, and we’ll make a break for it once enough time has passed. 

“The coat. The shoes. The weapons. Now, asshole,” Chiron orders in an even tone. 

“Why?” I ask, just as evenly.

“As you can see, I’ve got a big family, and crapsack supplies,” Chiron says, “and Savage isn’t exactly what you’d call generous or understanding. It’s shit we need. Lose them.”

I shake my head, still not sold on the idea that they’ll start shooting me up before they’ve made queries after Conner’s location, which, honestly, I’m clueless over at this point. While I hope that he’s gotten far enough away that he’s safe from this mess, I pray he’s not gotten so far that I can’t find him after it’s all over. “Sorry,” I say. “They mean too much to me.”

Chiron clenches his jaw in aggravation, and adjusts his hold on his weapon.

Bingo.

I toss an outside block to the barrel of the gun to throw off Chiron’s line of fire, and spring.

I wheel into a tight, compressed front walkover to gain some momentum, drive an elbow into Chiron’s collarbone as I come back up, and then duck behind the cover of the nearest tree when his gun and all the others explode into a flurry of disorienting, cacophonous noise and dazzling light. My wrists blaze in pain, but I can ignore it for now with the amount of adrenaline blasting through my system. Hauling myself up into the branches, I climb out over an overhanging limb, and drop down on one Marauder’s shoulders, bringing him flat to the ground on his chest and bouncing the gun from his hand. It goes off once, spins over the icy earth, and judders off of a Marauder’s boot. Going up on my hands, I rotate into an inverted version of a low spinning heel kick, taking out another of the men as I do. I move from the handstand into a back handspring when Machete Guy joins the fray, and melt into the shadows of the trees once I’m on my feet. I then dart back out at the nearest opportunity to press an Escrima stick over Julius’ throat and drag him down. 

There’s the sudden _snap_ of gunfire, and not that _hiss_ that indicates the bullets are close in proximity, but not exactly gunning for your ass any time soon—it’s the legitimate snapping sound that means oh, yes, they are _undoubtedly_ coming your way. I leap in shock and every limb shudders, but as the echoes of this thunderous snap die, I find I’m mostly unharmed—just ringing totally deaf in my disfigured ear and planted on my can next to a patch of shredded earth. I fight to calm my breathing as the shakes start and my teeth chatter. Julius, coughing and spluttering, clumsily rights himself, and stumbles away to stand behind one of his older compatriots.

I look up, and find Chiron’s gun once again in my face.

“I mean it, you piece of shit Sam,” he says, his voice low, dangerous. “Get the fuck up. Lose the coat and shoes and those sticks. Now.”

“All right,” I murmur, making a conciliatory motion with my hands and rising to my feet, “all right.”

I chuck the weapon in my hand at his feet, shed the coat, and toss it toward Chiron. I try not to think about the syringe in the inside pocket, or the remaining Escrima stick in the holster sewn to it. When he jerks his head toward my feet, I clench my teeth and grind my jaw, but I pull the shoes off and drop them on the ground. The soles of my feet go soaked and numb in seconds. 

“Now that sweater,” he orders, tightening his grip on his gun.

My jaw goes slack. Zatanna had knitted it for me. No way was I giving it over. “You’ve got to be kidding me—”

His finger tightens on the trigger. “ _Now._ The sweater, and while you’re at it, the flannel, too.”

I shake my head. “I’ll give you the flannel, I’m keeping the sweater.”

I jump and about lose my heart through my teeth when he fires a shot so close to my leg it shears my jeans. 

“ _Now_ ,” he barks.

“Fucking _ass_ hole,” I mutter under my breath, but pull the sweater over my head, and with a great deal of hesitation, let it drop to the ground. It’s not like telling this bastard my dead partner made me that shirt will warm him up inside and make him change his mind. I just pray he doesn’t ask for the wristband that contains my holographic computer—the only means I have to communicate with Artemis and Kaldur.

I grit my teeth as I unbutton the flannel and peel it off, trying not to entertain the nauseating image of one of these monsters spoiling the sweater that Zatanna had lavished weeks on knitting for me. I shiver in the white thermal Henley, cleaving to my perspiring torso, the only remaining top wear I have now. As it stands, I’ll be hypothermic in short order and if I can’t get those bags back, I’m toast. Or Popsicle, in this case. And while Conner still has his coat wherever he is, I’m not liking his chances with no blankets or spare clothes any better. Wolf is like a giant furnace, but even the heat from his big, furry body only goes so far. 

We need the packs. 

I cast about as Machete Guy ambles forward, walking with a pronounced limp, and gathers up the clothing and shoes from the ground. 

There. On his bum leg, in a holster. A revolver. 

I duck into a somersault, attuned to the sounds of gunfire to keep my bearings, and down Machete Guy with a low spinning sweep kick. As he drops like a wrecked pile of drywall and loses his grip on the blade, I swipe the revolver from the holster strapped to his quad, wrangle him into a choke hold, and train the weapon on my assailants as I come up to assume a solid stance, with my captive between me and any enemy fire. Although Bruce and I both abhor firearms, we agreed long ago it was a wise move to at least know how to use them. As it stands, I’m not in a _great_ position to start tossing threats around, but I’m a damn good marksman—tons better than these clods—and I know I can deliver non-fatal, disabling shots to at least three or four of my opponents before even one of them can land a significant hit on me in this Mexican stand-off. 

“Well, you’re ballsy, I’ll give you that,” says Chiron, a grudging note of admiration in his even voice. “But what you haven’t got is brains to match that sack—you think one revolver’s going to stand up to five automatic weapons?”

“It will when I’ve got a guy between me and you and you’re all piss-poor shots,” I say, tightening my hold on my wriggling hostage, “which you are.”

“Oh, _I’m_ not,” Chiron says in a low, silky voice. 

I lift the gun, aiming it at right at his head. “I’m not, either,” I tell him in an equally silky tone. “And I want the supplies and clothes back.”

“Let the man go and I’ll consider it.”

“My stuff first.”

“No, let him go,” Chiron says.

There’s not much reason to keep holding onto this guy anymore, considering I actually have something of an upper hand here, so I shove the Marauder away. He tumbles to his hands and knees, and I drive my heel into his rump as he makes an effort to rise. You know, to keep him from getting any witty ideas about springing into an attack while I’m distracted with his boss. 

“The bags and clothes,” I state, cupping the palm of my now free left hand over the handle of the revolver, my hands surprisingly steady, unaffected by my roaring heart.

“Tell you what,” says Chiron. “I can’t deny my associates suck at shooting, so… You can have the supplies and shit back, just tell us where the kid is.”

“No,” I reply. My voice is calm, level; however, my face gets furiously hot as my heart speeds up in fear. Shit’s getting real—and I know that if this last ditch effort of mine fails, I’m done and dusted—

—and so is Conner. 

“Besides,” I continue, “I don’t know where he got off to. I couldn’t tell you even if I felt like it.”

“Well, then you’ll help us find him,” says Chiron. 

I snort. “Yeah, much as I’d love to toast to a great new partnership and build a big old frat house and get plastered together… Why don’t you have your Hounds on it?”

Chiron’s jaw works. “One of the Hounds we lost to the river. And with a bunch of our guys sick or dead, it’s not like we’ve been able to forage much, and there’s shit in the way of game around here, anyway. So that last dog we’ve got is well on its way to starving. And yeah… while he’s more than capable of tearing your head off and making food out of your dick, I _really_ don’t like that big-ass white wolf you’ve got with you, wherever it is… and I’m not risking one of Savage’s more valued assets against that thing unless I absolutely have to.”

I squint at him over my scarf. “Telling me your weaknesses? Speaking of balls, either you’ve got some brass ones in those panties, or you’re the one who’s taken too many blows to the head, here.”

He huffs an aggravated breath. “You’re not doing yourself any favors, you know, talking like that. Sad for you, I’m not stupid. Anyway—whether you’re helping us find the brat of your own free will or not, the kid will come to you, last I checked. …You _are_ his father, aren’t you?”

“What if I am?”

Chiron looks away, setting his jaw. He returns his gaze to me. “You know what. I’m done talking.” His hands tighten on his weapon. “Where’s the kid.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“Bullshit.”

“Scout’s honor. I’d raise my right hand, but…” I shrug, gesturing with the revolver. 

“Then _find_ him.”

“No.” 

“Do I need to remind you who’s holding the bigger gun?” Chiron queries. “That’s right. Now. _Find the kid.”_

“Sorry, I don’t feel like it right now,” I say mulishly. I cock the revolver. 

“ _Start_ feeling like it,” says Chiron. “Where’s the kid.”

“Fuck you,” I growl, placing my index finger on the trigger. 

“Tell us, asshole,” Chiron snarls, his voice finally losing its calm inflection. “ _Where is the kid!”_

I squeeze the trigger, aiming now for Chiron’s shoulder—and draw up in horror when only a lifeless click is issued from the revolver.

Then, a _snap._

There’s a scream of ice and fire in my left quadriceps, the same leg that’s still completely gimped in the cold from the bullet wound I took to the calf all those years ago, and it doesn’t matter what a badass you might be—you get hit in the quad with a bullet from a high-powered rifle, you’re going to drop like a rock. And I do.

I lie on my back and grip my thigh with both hands, the revolver dropped and forgotten, blood running over my fingers in thick, dark breakers of red in the illumination of the fire and sweeping white of the flashlights. I’m dimly aware of the sound of boisterous laughter echoing around me in the otherwise still, deathly silent night.

“Unlucky,” Chiron’s saying as he steps over to me, the barrel of his gun smoking in the cold, the light attached to it blinding my blurred vision. “Soooo fuckin’ unlucky. That revolver you swiped off Conrad? That’s the revolver we use to play Russian Roulette with assholes like you.” He pauses, then laughs, and shakes his head. “Unlucky fuck.” He presses the muzzle of the gun to my temple as I curse myself for failing to check the chamber before I leveled my own worthless, pilfered weapon on him. “Think it goes without saying I knew it the whole time you had that mostly useless thing trained on me.” He smirks. “Lucky for us. Now. I’m going to ask you one last time.” He pushes the barrel of the rifle into my temple, its sharp mouth piercing the soft flesh just above my brow, and repeatedly shoves the edge of the weapon into my skin as he snarls, “ _Where. Is. The. Kid.”_

I look up at him through the stars blinking across my field of vision. My voice comes slowly, issued stickily, gutturally. “Fuck… you.”

His steel-toed boot drives into my abdomen, expelling whatever air I had in me out through my chest. I feel two ribs give. He bends down and swipes the scarf from my face before I can recover. 

He pauses a moment, studying me, his eyes narrowing, a glint of something unnamed, vulturine, malevolent, crawling into them. He clasps my face in one hand, his gaze roving over my features, his expression one that stalls my breath and dams my blood flow—hungry, curious, unbending. 

“Where’s the kid, pretty boy,” he murmurs, his hand gripping my chin, his fingers digging painfully into my cheeks. 

“Fuck you,” I repeat thickly, and spit in his face.

He barks a shrill laugh, and levels me with a good blow to my brow, just at the hairline, with the heel of his hand. He draws his knuckle across his cheekbone. 

As I reel from the clout to the head, I notice movement in the undergrowth beyond where I lie, and I crane my neck to investigate.

Conner. And Wolf, partially concealed in the thicket. 

Wolf is at my son’s side, crawling, his big body flat to the ground, as the boy worms his way toward me through the underbrush, determination and alarm flitting recurrently across his face. I abruptly come out of my daze, and while Chiron is distracted wiping my spittle away, I vehemently shake my head at Conner. 

_No,_ I mouth, when he persists. _No._

I lose a breath in relief when both he and Wolf, after some hesitation, disappear into the shadows. He’s got some damn effective veils up. It won’t matter how thoroughly these douchebags canvas this area looking for him now—even if they trip on him, they won’t find Conner or Wolf. And with how much better he’s gotten at throwing the shrouds up, the remaining Hound, wherever it might be, will probably even have trouble pinpointing them by scent. 

Chiron kneels down over me. “Spit at me again, GI Joe, and I’ll cut your fucking tongue out—just like I did your girlfriend the last time you and I crossed paths. Yeah, I _know_ who you are.” I tighten my jaw as Chiron leans in closer to me, the umber brown curls of his hair dangling barely an inch away from my face. “So. You still shave out here in the woods?” He snorts. “Yeah. Pretty boys like you, they always gotta shave, I guess. Fucking Prom Queens.”

I don’t reply, just keep my teeth clenched shut. The truth is, sure, I still shave. Brush my teeth, too. Do my best with hobo showers. I haven’t cleaned up much since before Conner and I got sick, but even so, I’ve got nothing on this Sasquatch-looking, trash heap-smelling gang of Marauders. I had wanted to make an easy time of recognizing me for Artemis and Kaldur when we met after years of separation. 

“Well. Guess that’s not important. Now. Tell me where the kid is, shitbag,” Chiron says. 

“Go fuck yourself,” I exhale. “Shitbag.”

He pauses, a strange, unsettling smile slowly breaking out over his baby face, a smile that, again, for a reason I can’t identify, turns my blood to dry ice in my veins. He shakes his head, his eyes glittering in the guttering firelight. 

“You know what? I don’t think so. Not today,” he murmurs, his voice deep and intense. He’s leaning now so close to me that I can smell his fetid body odor, feel his hot, sour breath as it tickles my face. His hair brushes against my cheek. “Not today, pal.”

Everything inside me screams to get the fuck out—and _now_. 

I twist away from him, blood soaking my leg as I thrash toward any means of escape I can find, and meet only the booted heel of one of the others. Fireworks go off in my field of vision as I swivel and wind up on my back, my whole face gone numb and red-hot, my chest jumping under the material of my thermal shirt. Disconnectedly, when the sparklers dim, I notice that it’s snowing.

“Don’t aim for his face, dumbass,” I hear Chiron say, his words pinging around the interior of my skull. 

“What do you mean, why?” 

“I don’t want him uglied up,” wavers the reply through my aching crown. 

“Oh…” The tone is knowing, in accord. _“Meat.”_

Unsure of what “meat”is, but decidedly not caring for the sound of it, given that these same men are confirmed fucking cannibals, I try to send signals to my limbs to move. Stubbornly, they lie static, sinking into the wet, snowy earth. Whoever clocked me—clocked me damn good. I’m looking through a soda straw at a steadily turning sky, the snow swirling in dizzying circles as I funnel down, falling through the air even as my back rests against the solid ground. The leg of my jeans is freezing into a hardened pack of frozen, coagulated blood against my injured thigh. 

Hands roughly boost me up, grabbing me under the armpits, and haul me next to the campfire. Pain bolts up and down my leg as it bounces over the earth, my side stitching into a knot of agony where my ribs are dislocated. Voices chatter around me, words indeterminate, but instinctively understood _not_ to be good. Blindly, I reach out and swing, snaking my body, resisting my captors, fighting through the hurts and the vertigo of blood loss. I slip away from Chiron’s clawing grip, but don’t make it far. I cry out in stinging agony as he squeezes up a fistful of my hair to drag me by it unceremoniously through the rapidly accumulating snow. I end up chucked in a heap by the leaping embers of the fire, where my thinly clad body is afforded a little warmth.

It’s enough to bring some semblance of coordination and understanding back to my spinning brain, and the words around me become intelligible.

“—I like his eyes.” 

A cough. 

“Oooohhhh, they’re _nice_.”

“Yeah.” Chiron’s voice, breathless and excited, vibrating with an irregular energy. “Kind of looks like a bitch if you squint.”

And then, all at once, I snap back to total awareness as he’s full-tilt on top of me. 

I thrust an elbow at Chiron’s face as he claws at my shirt. I connect with his forearm, and try again, grazing his ear. I draw my legs up, my hands digging into the biceps of his arms, and attempt a sacrifice throw. I’m smaller and quicker, but Chiron is heavier and much, _much_ stronger, and with my injured leg, fractured ribs, and blows to the head, I don’t have a chance. He’s shuffled off to the side, hardly even thrown off balance. At his barked order, two of the men brace their weight on my legs. I thrash, I twist, I try hurling punches, I try every practiced evasive maneuver I’ve learned since starting out as Robin and even before that as a circus brat— _nothing_ works. Chiron catches both my hands, wrenches my arms down, and throws his weight into me. The breath goes from my chest, squeezed out and closed off, his bulk crushing my upper body.

“Get his shirt off,” he hisses at his goons, now drawing up and pushing one knee into my bent arms, focusing his weight on them, pressing them into my broken ribs. There’s the sound of a switchblade springing from its handle. Chiron’s big, burly hands grip both of my injured wrists—wrists narrow and frail by comparison—with such force that the pain splinters up through my shoulders and the blood throbs and tingles in my fingers, my phalanges gone to so many pins and needles. I fight to breathe through the compression of his mass atop my chest.

I bend my knees, thrusting my heels down with every ounce of muscle I have left in me, free my legs from the two Marauders clasping them, and by some deific miracle wrest myself from Chiron’s grip, the flesh of my wrists blistering hot and the knot in my side aflame. I flip to my belly, and pull myself over the snow in a battle crawl, then fruitlessly try slipping away as Chiron bodily hauls me up by the midsection. He hurls my writhing form with all his strength back to the ground. I crash into the cinders of the fire, all of the wind knocked from my lungs in a burst of white condensation and an unseemly squawk, and I roll away from the ashes to my back, my shirt smoldering, my head smarting where it struck a stray tree branch buried in the snow.

Chiron capitalizes on my disorientation to heave me up into a Full Nelson, and the same men from before again grip both my legs, one landing on his seat as I connect my heel to his face before he can get a good handle on my calf. I go limp, about the only feasible defense in my condition against a double shoulder lock. 

It’s effective enough, and I slide loose from Chiron’s hold. I tug my arms the remaining way free, drive the flat of my palm against the face of the Marauder attached leech-like to my lower body, and take off at the best sprint I can manage on my bad leg. 

Before I can even take a few steps, I come face-to-face with the Hound, materialized I swear to God out of the freezing air, its great, boxy shoulders hunched, its teeth bared, so many notched daggers. Like a miscreant kid caught mid-mango robbing a convenience store, I freeze in my tracks, and wonder where in Sam Hill it came from. 

I don’t have time to worry about this, when the Marauder I recognize as Roderigo comes to the beast’s side, the chain in one hand, and leers at me from over the slide of his gun. My arms go tight to my sides as the echoing resonance of cocking hammers bounces off of the pines around us. I turn every which way, seeking an out. Nothing. I’m surrounded.

When Chiron—persistent bastard—barrels up behind me, I give it one last, decent effort as I’m bowled to the ground.

I’m twisted onto my front in the snow, dirt, and pine needles, with more than one pair of hands clasping my lashing wrists. 

“Get the Hound tied back up and out of the way,” Chiron orders, and digs his fingers into the fabric of my Henley shirt, his weight pinning my legs against the forest floor, the other Marauders now backing off to encircle us as though bearing witness to some bizarre rite. Roderigo leads the beast to a nearby conifer and binds it to the trunk, where it sits restlessly, its head leaning forward, its mangled paws spread wide, watching with a wired air as I struggle, worm, and writhe; all for nothing. Chiron is too strong, too heavy. The shirt comes off in ribbons, wrested back to twist about my arms, cutting off the blood supply to my hands. I hear the Marauders jeering. The snowy needles sting my naked chest. 

There’s a part of me that’s not really invested in this situation, that’s distant, dissociated, thinking, analyzing; that’s uncertain of what’s happening just now, that’s entirely confused about the mess I’m in. Even when Chiron rises up, tears off his gloves, and yanks my lower body into the air, pawing with his rough fingers at my blood-soaked jeans to hull them down my legs and away from my ankles, even when he pulls the fabric of my thermal undergarments into tangled fistfuls to peel the material over my hips and I feel the smack of cold air on my bare ass, this part of me is still confused, still crying a resounding denial. 

I catch the terrible, telltale sound of a belt buckle coming undone behind me, a clicking, a rustling, the wet, phlegmatic hack of spitting, and then I become suddenly aware of the uneven cadence of hoarse, ragged screaming—and realize it’s me. I’m screaming. I’ve been screaming this entire time. 

I fight with what weak faculties I have left when Chiron’s hot, beefy, ungloved hands close damp on my hips, shoving my waist into the ground, fencing my struggles, my arms tangled in the remains of my shirt behind me, twisted at the elbows, the shoulders grinding. I feel the heat from his torso and inguen, the hem of his shirt brushing across my back as he bears down on my exposed backside. I squeeze my eyes shut, dig my front into the frosted carpet of pine boughs in an effort at the only distance I can now place between him and me, squirm vainly, and grit my teeth, aware of a mounting, fierce, burning pressure, growing, intense, fighting against my body's own involuntary resistance. And then, all at once, there’s the explosive, popping sense of _yielding_ that leaves me breathless and jawing against the sharp, icy pine needles chafing my cheek. 

Everything all at once goes dim and smoky, all things ceasing; the world itself plunged into an out-of-focus, slow-moving, underwater time. If I’m here, I’m only present corporeally; my mind swims somewhere far beneath the surface of this watery reality, keeping to the still, silent depths, avoiding the tumultuous shallows.

 _Oh, you_ tight, _Prom Queen..._

I’m superfluously aware of the surface reality, of Chiron’s hand heavily opened across the side of my face, bracing his weight there, shoving my skull into the forest floor; of the muffled reports of voices, a baying, repetitive grunt, the muted clap of skin striking skin; of a disconnected sense that I’m in _pain-pain-dear_ God _the pain,_ pain I don't feel, not really, but know, somehow, to be nascent in my tailbone and unfurling in jagged blossoms through the small of my back and spearing into my abdomen; of the variegated dermis of a rough, callused palm dragging over the flesh of my shoulders; of snowy muck and pine needles caked all over my abraded cheek and sifting into my mouth. Suffocating, buffeting weight drives my front into the frozen ground, endlessly knocking the wind out of me, a ceaseless, repeating punch to the chest. My hair strings into my eye under Chiron’s thick palm, his index finger mashing the bridge of my nose, setting off lights in my vision.

In a series of half-realized snapshots I wonder where Conner is, if he’s safe, if he’s lost, if he’s stuck by Wolf, if he’s separated, if he’s nearby, if he’ll be seen, if he’s seeing this, whatever _this_ is, if this is happening at all, if it’s just some fucked up dream I’ve wandered into. 

_Is this happening._

_This isn’t happening._

_Is it._

_It can’t be._

_No._

_Not real._

_I’m dreaming._

_I’m dreaming. It’s not real. I’m dreaming. I’m not here._

…But I _am_ here.

And this _is_ real. 

There’s a gasp that escalates into a howl as Chiron bucks with such violence that my teeth grate together and sink into my tongue, tearing my cheek to bloody, stinging shreds against the rough, needly ground, the movement undulating painfully in my flaring, throbbing, beaten insides. The breath at my diaphragm is penned there, trapped, inert. 

The hand at last releases my face, moving to my vertebral, sweaty and flat on my skin. Chiron’s husky breathing echoes in the sudden silence of the pine copse, his tinny voice humming with each exhalation. He sags, his chest swelling and receding against my back. He pants a laugh, rises, and as though praising a farm animal, callously slaps my rump. Then, _finally_ —he slides free. My face is drenched against the ground, my tongue gritty and throat choked with dirt and nettles, everything inside me a scorching inferno. I can’t feel my leg anymore. I’m pouring sweat but trembling so violently I have to clench my chattering teeth to keep from sawing off my tongue. I draw in a breath through my nose, let it go through my rattling mouth, breathe again, release. Breathe. Release. Breathe. Release.

I lift my face, spitting out the dirt and needles, and slowly boost myself onto my side, my muscles quivering and caked in perspiration and watered ice, my bare skin steaming in the frigid air. The snow swirling through the pine branches tickles my flesh. Breathe. Release. Breathe. Release. 

The raucous laughter that breaks out around me all at once pierces into my swimming head, shifts my guts, heats my chest. Tears clinging to my lashes shiver loose, dropping over my face to the ground in tandem with the steady snowfall. A thick bulge of bile pushes at my gullet. I attempt another breath, and throw up a thin spray of bloody water that splashes over the white-dotted earth. When I take another breath, I hitch. I didn’t even grasp that I’d been crying until just now.

“Aww, what’s wrong, Prom Queen…”

I don’t look in the direction of the voice, just close my eyes and tense my muscles against it, and keep concentrating my breathing, feeling the blood as it dribbles over the flesh at the back of my legs in tepid, itching rivulets, cooling on my skin in the glacial chill; a feeling strangely like pissing in bed. 

“Hey. Prom Queen. Conrad asked you a question,” Chiron says harshly, still breathless. I don’t speak. I can’t. I clear the rest of the dirt from my mouth, and reach one shaking shoulder up to wipe the clotted string of vomit and earth from my chin. My heart is in my throat, twanging there, my stomach just under it in my gorge; a surefire promise of more retching. Every breath taken is bought with dizzying nausea. 

_Get up._

I don’t move. 

_Get up._

_Find Conner. Find him. Get him_ out _of this place._

_Signal Artemis._

_Get up. Find him. Run. Signal._

_Now._

_GET UP._

One bound arm jerks a little.

_GET UP GET UP GET UP—_

“Shitbag. Wake the fuck up,” Chiron says, grabbing a handful of my hair and shoving me roughly toward Conrad, the Marauder with the bum leg and revolver. 

I suck in a breath and hold it when the cold, dull metal of that same revolver is pressed against my temple, and then Conrad’s hand is on my throat, further detaining my breath and holding my weight up by my jaw. 

I jerk and lift my legs to counter him, my motions sluggish and stunted. The dream-like quality they take on as they move and my own sudden inability to remember how to fight my way out of this render more real the wild hope that I am, in fact, in some lucid nightmare, or I’m just still sick and hallucinating, that all of this is fever dreaming. My line of sight is diminishing, twinkling into a greenish-gray miasma as I labor to drag breath past his grip on my neck. I feebly try pull my head back, past fighting, and go hard to my knees when he abruptly releases me. I spit up blood from my bitten tongue and broken ribs, coughing, my throat like a blossom of sandpaper.

“Frog in your throat?” Conrad leers down at me, keeping the muzzle of the revolver against my temple. “Because you know, if not—” he shrugs, “I could maybe fix that for you.”

There’s a smattering of laughter. 

“Chiron, you want to do the honors?” Conrad murmurs, his eyes boring into mine.

Chiron takes the handle of the gun to keep the damp, warming metal against my temple. His hand curls over the back of my neck, pincers holding my head in place. “My pleasure.”

I jerk, throwing my head behind me, when the repeated, familiar, now profoundly dreaded sound of a buckle clinking loose clangs into my ringing ears. My crown collides ineffectively with Chiron’s stomach through his hand, but in his moment of pause and lost grip, I solidly—and on some level, satisfyingly—connect my shoulder with his groin. He expels a groan, bending at his midsection, and takes the gun with him. I force myself to my feet, dragging my hurt leg along at the fastest pace I can manage without blacking out. In keeping with my current streak of astonishingly rotten luck, a heel soundly connects with the small of my back, and I drop to my obverse in the snow, the wind knocked out of me for the nth damn time tonight. The Hound is wailing from where it’s tied up, the sound flaying my already shrieking nerves and shattering my pounding head. Hands flip me to my back, more hands wrestle my struggling legs down into the rough, nettle-laden carpet of the forest floor. I can’t, for all my efforts, free my arms, twisted in my own shirt from the wrists to the elbows, to access my wristband. Conrad’s face sneers over me. 

“Rack my boss. Boot me in the ass,” he breathes, now free of the fetters of his battered uniform slacks. “Take it up yours for that one, Prom Queen.”

And as the revolver issues one click against my forehead and I know that to retaliate is to die and leave these horrible brigands all at once unoccupied and entirely free to attempt finding my son and visit God knows what horror upon him, the other Marauders whoop riotously as Conrad shoulders his comrades aside and flips me to my front, and I learn just how deep into my own mind I can go.


	15. Now Is a Time to Storm

Conner took his first steps when he was maybe nine months old.

He got started a bit early, having inherited his inexorable energy from his old man. 

The electricity was off for the afternoon, per regulation. I was seated in a leather seat by the fire in the den, working on longhand hashing out some code for the encrypted network we used to communicate with our scattered compatriots. Zatanna, taking a break from her knitting, sat on the floor at my feet, one arm slung around my calf, her head resting on my knee. She smiled, watching Bruce play with Conner with a handmade sock monkey (her handiwork, not mine) on a blanket by the hearth. I reached out and stroked the heavy silk of her hair, code momentarily forgotten while I observed Bruce as he braced our son’s hands, providing him balance, praising him when the boy held himself up without support. Bruce pulled his own hands back, withholding the sock monkey, and Conner, interested, took one determined, clumsy step toward him. 

“Dick!” Zatanna squealed excitedly. 

“Oh, yeah, I see him,” I said, leaning forward, watching my son as he took first one step, then two, then three, and made his way onto Bruce’s lap with the stuffed toy. 

We took turns having Conner walk to us for the rest of the afternoon, Alfred and Jason joining us eventually. Having learned that this skill opened up an entirely new world of play, Conner joyfully got his other toys involved, and Bruce, Jason, and I played with him while Zatanna and Alfred splurged on the rations to make hot chocolate over the fire to celebrate. 

Sipping at this unusual indulgence, and sitting by the fire, with my son worn out and drowsing in my lap, Bruce and Jason talking over the Light and Luthor a little ways off, Zatanna leaning against my side and working on knitting the blanket that we still carry even now, and listening to Alfred read softly aloud to us from the pages of _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ , I felt much as I had when I had observed Zatanna that morning in our room as she sat up in bed, running her hand over her bare, pregnant belly, and smiling as she paused, having found the baby under her palm—entirely happy.

I guess it makes sense that I’d settle on that as the memory I wanted most to escape to. 

Other memories come to the fore, Dad patiently showing me how to master a particularly tough trapeze maneuver unique to our troupe, Mom sitting with me as we cut paper snowflakes on my sixth birthday, my first ride in the Bat Mobile, cooking with Alfred, an afternoon spent with Wally in Happy Harbor, the day we found Superboy and freed him from Cadmus, the Mathletes Nationals after-party with Barbara our junior year. 

I wonder if, when I die, this is what the hereafter will be comprised of; if maybe I’m already halfway there, and that’s why these reveries are so vivid. 

Everything I’ve done up to this point has been to avoid dying. 

I think I’m forgetting why.

*******

_Voices._

_All in spurts._

_Echoing._

_Sudden._

_Then vanishing into mist, as though never spoken, shunned, all of them. Sounds I don’t want to become memories._

_Unable to feel my body anymore, sensing only pervasive deadness and ice. Fighting with my bonds, finally loosening them, only to have my arms grasped and pinned down in spite of what wholehearted efforts I put into struggling. Hands all over my back, pulling my hair. Fighting, earning only the crowbar and nail bat in return. Lost in memory. Waiting for help that never comes. Wishing for Bruce to Swoop In and Show Up like he always did. Knowing that he won't. Every ounce of fight I give failing. Fearful, uncertain of Conner’s whereabouts, praying he doesn’t decide to show up right about now and expose himself. Knowing I probably can’t protect him if he does. Hoping my captors will toy with me long enough to wear themselves out, lose interest in him, at least long enough for him to get to real safety until I can reach him._ If _I can reach him._

_The few times I dare open my eyes, I see only red._

_The churned up snow is crimson with my blood, vivid blooms of it coloring the earth and painting the nettles, flickering in the roaring firelight. Whether it’s from my leg or elsewhere, I can’t say. But I’m feeling the effects of the blood loss, every motion alighting spots in my sight, sending numb, trembling weakness through my limbs._

_After a time, the only thing I’m able to formulate into thought is that it won’t end._

_It’s never going to end._

_It’s_ never _going to end._

_*******_

My ground-up cheek sizzles, shredded and shorn, the blood lukewarm and smeared in a tacky, viscous shroud over my face. 

_It’s never going to end—_

I ran the Leadville Marathon back in my old life, i.e. the life before the Horsemen, when marathons were still a thing. I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me the night before on a really rough mission, I’d had a ten-page paper due that morning, and I’d gotten maybe fifteen minutes of sleep max. But I’d paid the fee, damn it, and I was going to finish, even if my headspace was _not_ conducive to a personal record for that distance. All I could think as I plodded through the last eleven miles of that goddamn thing was that it was never going to end. 

The same thing is going through my head now, with all of the happy jaunts down Memory Lane no longer holding water, the denial and removal settling into a frightened sense of recognizing actuality. 

_It’s never going to end._

_It’s…_ never… _going to end._

But, suddenly, in this crushing second of despair, I think of Conner, a clear, brazen image of him showing up like the sighting of some holy avenging angel in my line of sight, blotting out the shifting image of blurring tree branches like so many obsidian, clawing bones and bloody breakers of snow farcically like so many mounds of cherry sweet ice. 

_Okay. Okay. Okay._

I hold onto those last eleven miles. I focus on each step. How my legs felt gummy and weak. How the stitches in my side burned, faded with concentrated respiration, how the Gatorade flipped back and forth like a fishtail in my gut. How many times I threw up frothy sport drink. The moment I hauled ass off the trail and sank my lower body into the breath-sucking chill of a mountain stream to seek relief for my sore, juddering legs. 

One of the Marauders, one whose name I don’t know, breathes over my ear, gives one last maladroit jiggle of his hips, and abruptly stands up. I hear the sound of his fastener, his belt. He gaffes a joke I don’t listen to, chuckles, then clears his throat. There’s a smattering of echoing snickers, and then, with a reverberating suddenness, the painful, bruising fingers cutting off the flow of blood to my hands let go. 

My arms are free. 

I can reach holographic computer, embedded in the band on my left wrist, press the SOS button to alert Artemis.

_Do it—do it—_

I doubt that she or Kaldur are anywhere close, but if I don’t make it out of this, they’ll at least have a jump-off point for Conner’s location. This gang of thugs hasn’t left my arms completely free even once up until now—probably fearful of the ramifications of a former Batman protégé with free appendages. Kind of a laugh, considering I’m in _bad_ shape and even if I do break my way out, I have a sneaking suspicion that I might not be hanging around for my son’s eleventh birthday. 

Still, I can’t worry about that right now—I _finally_ have much bigger fish to fry. With one arm that moves like a globular mass of tree sap, I seek the button on the wristband to activate the touchscreen, questing with fat, prickling, unfeeling digits. I grasp the small indenture under my ring finger. I apply pressure, and my fingertip, bloody and slick, slips away ineffectively. 

“What are you doing,” Chiron mutters.

Before I can depress the button, he yanks my forearm toward him, and with one efficient motion that claws my skin, he rips the band from my wrist. 

“No—” I protest, reaching helplessly as he drops the band to the ground. He unceremoniously drops one damning, funereal heel on it with a horrible crunching sound.

“Oh, sorry, you need that?” he asks, glaring down at me with his innocuous baby face. He looks away, his eyes sweeping his companions. “Which of you dumbasses left his arms free?”

I turn to my back, and just start to cry. 

In my own way, I’ve mentally rallied against what’s happening up until now. Or at least, I’ve gone into a sort of survival-by-evasion mode. It’s all that’s kept my spirit grasping at whatever straws of hope are still extended my way. I don’t yet want to relinquish the prayer that there’s an out. But seeing that last beacon crushed like a fucking beetle soundly stomps that hope, just like Chiron’s heel smashed my wristband. 

I think I might be pretty damn ready to give up.

“Someone dispatch this tub of shit,” Chiron says. “He’s not going to talk, we’ll find the kid ourselves. Get the Hound on him, hasn’t eaten in days. I don’t think that wolf is coming any time soon—if it was going to show up, it would’ve done it by now.”

The Marauders back away as Roderigo saunters over to where the Hound is tied, and with a resonant click and a terse command, lets it free. 

My life passes in front of my eyes as the beast careens toward me. It’s a useless endeavor, but I flip to my stomach and make a clawing stab at escape through the images that play back across my sightscape; some events envisage themselves with garish, vibrant colors, others with palettes flat and dim, some driving my heart and others stopping it. My predominant regret stands out in ugly, screaming relief against the panoramic sights of my life—my son, my abandoning him, my inability to protect him, my gravest failure.

All the images evaporate into a flurry of snarling, rank breath, gnashing, serrated teeth, claws like meathooks, crushing weight like a double-decker bus, burly shoulders thinly covered with a sparse layer of coarse, brindle hair, lantern-like, colorless eyes rolling into a vast skull.

I try drawing my legs up to hurl its bulk from me, my left lifeless and unresponsive, my right pinned against the frozen earth. I strike ineffectively at the muzzle with the jackal jaw that widens to an unnatural radius, the teeth longer than my hands, one snap of them cleaving my ulna in two like a piece of dry tinder and splintering the radius. One more bite from these gaping jaws and my forearm will sever.

The teeth dig into my shoulder, drawing the trapezius muscle into its hot, slimy maw, and it gives a hard, growling shake of its massive head, its weight braced by its forepaw atop my broken ribs. I’m hollering raggedly, still punching at the beast with my uninjured arm. I lift a knee, try to thrust the monster away. I feel the jaws lock around my injured thigh, bolting lightning-hot shafts of searing agony through my entire body as the head, again, viciously whips back and forth. I sense a _pop_ through the blind screaming of rent muscles and tissue, and then my weight all at once dislodges from the beast’s grip and my back goes flat to the ground. I don’t have to look to know that my leg is gone.

The teeth shift over my bare chest to my abdomen, snuffling at my belly, then roving into the concavity with its jaws working, seeking my innards, snuffing whatever cries I issue in gouts of blood that bloom from my throat.

And then—

Like a shaft of lightning, as swift, as sudden, and as alarmingly devastating, a white streak shoots at the Hound from my peripheral vision like a ballistic missile, colliding with it in a storm of snarls and teeth, blood and fur flying. I reflexively gasp in a breath, choke on blood, all motions involuntary. My belly feels like an elephant or an aircraft carrier have perched there. Other than that, I don’t feel any pain, just a pervasive pressure that stalls all attempts at motion. I can’t breathe through the tickle of blood at my tonsils; I can’t cough, either, the pressure is too great. I risk turning my head, and find it frees up my throat somewhat. I draw a gurgling, slow, half-breath, and catch sight of Wolf, valiantly battling the Hound in a volley of gunfire. 

I stare, transfixed, watching as Wolf, quicker and more agile, but smaller and less burly, dances with his opponent in a deadly ballet, coming up on his hind legs to meet the Hound in a boxer’s clinch, the teeth of both snapping, splitting through fur and flesh, shedding spurts of blood across the snowy ground. The lock holds until the Hound swipes Wolf to the ground, where he lands on his side. I try shouting, and choke on my own bulbous, bloody throat when the Hound leaps atop his prone body. 

Wolf adroitly twists his great, white form under his boxy-shouldered, top heavy opponent before it can brace its weight, his silvery fur already spattered in red blood, and with his own impressive jaws, latches onto the Hound’s throat like a puma, unrelenting, no matter how the Hound writhes, claws, leaps, and drags. A poorly aimed shot from one of the Marauders shears off a chunk of the monster’s charcoal skin in a stripe of blood. I gaze in delirious awe as Wolf uses this opening to overpower his enemy, barreling it into the ground, and snapping its neck with a profound shake of his head. 

The responding gunfire spits in deafening tremors that rattle the trees, shearing bark and dislodging branches, as Wolf bounds back toward where I lie. He’s covered in blood, although I can’t tell how much of it is his, and how much is the Hound’s. I become aware of a hand on my unmarred shoulder, jouncing me. I hear my son’s voice, shaking and panicked, shrill with terror. Fear sets in, and dispels all shock as it brings me back to myself. The pain is sudden and astonishing, blacking my vision, soaking my cheeks with tears.

“Dad!”

I try to turn my head to find him through the blazing, black shroud of agony, can’t. 

_“Dad—_ Dad, _please—”_

I’m facing Conner. He’s still veiled. He can still run. 

I attempt speech.

The only words I can formulate in my rollicking brain are _no-nononononono—_

I manage one of these protests aloud through my clogged, swollen gorge. 

Then, there’s the awful sound of Wolf yelping, the gunfire ceasing, Conner screeching. 

This screeching, loud enough, unexpected enough, draws all of the Marauders up short, and they turn in the direction of the boy. 

My neck tenses into a stiff rod, and I feel my chin lowering to my chest. Inhaling once, I look up, and see Conner as he materializes in the pine thicket, standing beside me, his hands extended with the palms down, his knees bent, his feet planted. Looking all at once older than his ten years—and although clearly terrified, prepared. There’s a slow, strange tremor that swells unseen through the air, an odd, hair-raising sense of static electricity that shivers the trees and shudders the undergrowth. Wolf rolls to his feet from where he’s fallen, still alive, one foreleg lifted and held close to his belly. He limps over to Conner, and bristles at his side, his great shoulders hunched beneath the rippling fur, his reddened teeth bared and gleaming beneath his peeled lips, the fur about his muzzle and crest stained rusty with blood.

“Holy shit,” one of the Marauders breathes. “It’s the kid.”

“Yeah, that’s the meta all right,” Chiron says, leveling his gun on him. “Take him alive—but don’t worry about bodily harm. That won’t matter in the end.”

“Get rid of the wolf first,” Roderigo growls. 

“I don’t give a shit what you do, just get the goddamn kid,” Chiron says, and the air, once again, goes deafening and blinding as the guns light the world on fire.

I shut my eyes to it, helpless against the onslaught, praying none of the shots hits Conner, for it to end.

When the cacophony, at once brief and endless, ceases, there’s a smattering of confused queries, and I open my eyes.

Conner stands, unperturbed, his hands out, his back straight. Wolf lowers his head, snarling. 

Before I can make any sense of how none of those rounds connected with my seemingly unconcerned son and Wolf, I hear Conner draw in a breath.

 _“Erif nrub, nordluac elbbub,”_ he whispers, the sound of the incantation echoing as the mystic art infuses it, breathing power into it.

_Fire burn, cauldron bubble._

His mother’s spell.

I stare, completely agape, my injuries forgotten, all of the events hitherto for gone in a blink, as Conrad’s arms go up in a flurry of blue, violet, and green flame, fed by the blaze of the campfire. The flame sparks into a leaping inferno that engulfs both of his appendages in a beacon of orange, spreading to his torso, setting his face gruesomely alight. He’s screaming wildly, thrashing, burning, and I’m brutally reminded of M’gann as she died. 

Chiron, staring agog with his equally stricken companions, abruptly comes back to himself. He lifts and fires his weapon, curses as it jams, then drops the thing altogether as it smokes and blisters red at another inverse phrase from the boy. I’d had no idea that Zatanna had taught him any of these—nor have I seen magic so _sweeping_ outside of the likes of Klarion. The other Marauders drop their weapons, all of which have gone orange with fiery heat, melting into the ground in lumps of silvery-black magma. I keep watching in something that transcends shock as Conner raises both hands, murmurs another command I can’t make out, and with a thunderous burst, the entirety of the sky goes ablaze in a furious, blinding web of lightning. Bolts shatter the trees into ashen kindling, wracking the ground with seismic waves that rock my body, and set more fires aflame in the now blackened, demolished copse. One of the Marauders writhes and bellows on the ground when the lightning dissipates, another has joined Conrad as an ambulatory torch. Chiron shoves the latter to the earth, rolls him, jumping comically to avoid the fires; the flames are snuffed in a plume of black smoke. Conrad shrieks as he lies in a smoldering, thrashing heap. The other flailing, indistinguishable torch performs the stop, drop and roll routine, putting out his own fires, then lies stiff and weeping, a blistered pile of skin and melting clothing. 

One Marauder races at Conner, only to meet Wolf—who, even without the use of one leg, makes quick work of him in a snapping spray of blood. Squealing, the man stumbles back to his companions, bleeding and defeated.

“Jesus, we underestimated and botched the shit out of this,” Chiron hisses. His voice rises to a barking shout. “Pull back and regroup— _now_.”

“He’s just a _kid,_ Chiron! Savage will have our _heads_ if we pull back now!” one of the Marauders protests fearfully.

“He’ll have our heads anyway for losing those weapons and Hounds,” Chiron says, already cutting a path toward the trees. “And this isn’t a normal fucking kid—you ever see shit like this? Pull _back_ , dammit, _now._ ”

There’s the cracking sound of smoke grenades as they detonate around us, burying the copse in a mantle of thick, dove feather smoke that blends with the burn from the fires. My eyes sting, my bulbous throat constricts. I fight to breathe through it, find that the smoke has coated the blood bubbling at my gullet into a coagulated mass that I can’t pull oxygen past. My chest jumps erratically with each attempt, the blood gushing in spurts from my wounds, ebbing with my breath. 

When the smoke from the grenades clears, there’s quiet—permeating quiet, strangely tranquil. The only sounds are that of the softly whining wind and the chattering fires, which flicker in the gentle snowfall.

I stare up at the sky, now visible that the pines have been razed to sooty earth. I’m in arrested motion, entranced by the swirling of the snowflakes from the ebony clouds. I’m not in pain, not anymore. Even catching sight of my abdomen as I trace a dancing snowflake to where it lands there, melting atop the slick, bloody ropes of intestine that reach from my belly through the dark, livid flower of gore across my skin, feels no more tangible, no more comprehended to me than the wet chill of the air. My arm is turned at my side in the wrong direction, the punctures oozing and jagged, splinters of eggshell bone breaking through the surface of the flesh. My chest is soaked in a blanket of red from the gaping, savage bite to my shoulder. My leg tapers into a jagged tangle of bloody ribbons just above where the knee should have been.

For all of these horrors, I feel nothing, just a penetrating cold, cold seeping all the way into the nuclei, and an exhaustion so complete that my eyes flutter, the lids suddenly gone anvil-heavy. My limbs free-fall, as though floating slowly downward through space, even while the ground remains solid and flat against my back. 

I’m aware of Conner shaking me, and as I muster up what wherewithal I’ve still got to shift my gaze to him, I see his face, white and scrunched with terror, glittering with a sheen of tears that shine in the firelight. His eyes are ghoulishly shadowed, his features drawn and pinched, his flesh waxy—he looks _completely_ fatigued. Wolf is beside him, restive, whining, pacing with his injured foreleg held to his belly.

“Dad,” Conner says, his voice cracking. “ _Dad._ Please—Dad—get up—”

I have a feeling I won’t be getting up. When I try, I can’t even lift an arm to comfort my son, and my attempt to speak breaks a bubble of blood over my chin, a wave that subsides and froths at my teeth. My vision is going, smoking over, all things blurring in a swiftly darkening haze. 

“Dad,” Conner wails. “Dad, please—I’m sorry—I didn’t mean what I said, I didn’t mean it, please just get up—”

I manage to hoist my neck in the direction of his voice. I feel his arms close around my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, the tartan fabric of his coat scratching at my throat. 

“Dad—you were right—they were worse—they were a _lot_ worse—I shouldn’t have said what I did—I should have moved faster—I shouldn’t have waited so long—just get up, _please_ get up—”

He shakes me with a vehemence that cuts all vision, and bawls, “Dad, I’m sorry, I’m _so_ sorry, this was my fault—this was _all_ my fault—”

When he draws back, I pull together every last scrap I have, and, in a wheezing spray of blood and spittle, murmur to him.

“Don’t,” I whisper in a grating, reedy whistle. “It’s not.”

And then, one more stab at it, with what I’m pretty sure is my damn death rattle—

“I love you.”

I hear him crying in protest, from somewhere far off, a place where I can no longer see him, and where he’s falling increasingly out of earshot. There’s a sense of comfort that pervades the darkness and numbness as Wolf’s soft, heavy warmth lies down beside me, resting his head on the uninjured patch of my chest. I dimly register Conner saying something about finding help, but I’m well on my way into the dark, the silence, the unfeeling; so far that I can’t stop it, with this force pulling me, this something unseen, painlessly dragging me through this shadow place, past the proverbial point of no return.


	16. From These Devourers To Be Banished

_“Dad—Dad—help’s here, wake up—”_

_“…Oh, Jesus.”_

_“Please, please—we have to help him—”_

_Barking sobs, ragged and hoarse, swallowed in the darkness._

_“Son. Son, come away, come on, there’s nothing we can do for him now—”_

_“No—we_ can’t— _we can’t leave him—!”_

_“…He’s gone, son.”_

_“He’s still breathing, I feel it—”_

_“There’s nothing we can do.”_

_“I_ won’t _give up—I won’t! There has to be something,_ please—”

_“Listen… What’s your name, son?”_

_A sniff._

_“…Conner.”_

_“I’m so sorry, Conner. But sometimes… these things happen, and… you just… you have to let it go. Come on, now, come with me. Let it go, come on—”_

_“No-no-no! Please, there’s one more thing I have to try,_ please _just let me try!”_

_“…All right, son.”_

_*******_

_“How’s the boy, Molly?”_

_“Still out like a light. Barely responding to anything. But he’s breathing better, heart sounds stronger, and his vitals look okay. What was it you said happened?”_

_“I’m not even really sure, to be honest. I swear I’ve never seen anything like it. But whatever it was he did—it’s kept this one alive long enough to get him here.”_

_“…Jesus, Juan, barely…”_

_“Help me, will you? We don’t get on this right now, and this kid’s going to die. And that boy will have totaled himself out for nothing. I_ can’t _stand for that. Here, take his arm. Yeah, just like that. Just hold it there…”_

_“…Sorry, honey, I know that hurts…”_

_*******_

_Quiet. Stillness. Unfeeling. Tranquility._

_A sense of free-floating, at ease, without any fear, grief, hurt, or heartache. Alone, but entirely at peace. Sometimes imagining the sound of voices, indiscernible, unplaced. I don’t heed them. Memories occasionally beckoning. I ignore them. For now, I prefer the soft quiet, the painless shadow. Where I’m no one, I’m nothing; there is no one, there is nothing._

_Truthfully, I don’t know if I’m dead or not. I don’t know where I am, what this place is. I’m not overly certain of who I am now, or even of how I came to be here. But it’s silent in this vast space, calmer even than the deepest, most dearly bought sleep, and nothing hurts._

_I feel at times that something is pulling me, some sense of gravity so strong it seems irresistible; occasionally it nudges me, buffeting me through the darkness like an astronaut caught in a g-force. I cartwheel slowly, noiselessly, unwaking through the shadowy space, until I resume floating, undisturbed, in the quiet._

_*******_

It’s the light that finally pulls me out of the tranquility of the darkness, that thin, penetrating white light that raps persistently at my eyelids. I peel them open, and stare up at a big patch of pale blue, dotted here and there with gray shadows. 

Jesus Christ. Everything hurts. I mean _everything_ hurts. Before I can even take stock of where I am, where my son is, what the hell’s just happened, whether I’m living the famous “it was all a dream!” trope, or even whether we’re _safe_ , I have to tense every muscle in my body, shifting until I find a position that doesn’t leave all of my nerve endings screeching loud enough to be heard from Rann. 

When the pain abates, lapping back like a tide, I chance a look down at myself. I have memories of being hurt, of being in serious danger, but the details are hazy, incorporeal in my mind. 

Wherever I am now, though, it _looks_ safe enough—I’m in a wide, full-sized bed, covered in soft, flannel sheets, a heavy pile of woolen blankets, and a down comforter, whiter and I imagine more comfortable than a damn cloud. I peel back a corner of the bedcovers with my free arm, my motions wavering and weak. My breath flickers at the shocking, dismaying sight of the remainder of my leg, tingling and about fifteen sizes too big, wrapped off at its stump bottom and propped atop a mound of pillows, where it melts over them in a blaze of prickling needles. My arm is splinted, jerry-rigged in what appears to be a table leg wrapped in a towel and sheet. My abdomen is wrapped mummy-like in a thick binding of gauze, splotched here and there with poppy red blots. My shoulder has been carefully stitched and bandaged, and for the most part, my body is fairly clean, and I’m wearing a pair of unfamiliar men’s pajama pants, one leg hitched up past the bandaged stump of my thigh. I have to pee like a goddamn racehorse. 

Checking out my surroundings, it looks like a young man’s room, and that of one who’s spent the majority of his life based out of this homestead. It’s well kept and clean, so I doubt I’m in a Marauders’ haven, the fact that I haven’t been folded five ways and hung out to dry aside. Posters of varying age appeal adorn the walls—rugby, swimming, some doom metal band called _Vacant Eyes—_ I actually remember them; they were a group local to Amherst that played some shows in Gotham, a handful of movie promos, and, to my surprise and sudden sharp lance of pain, Superboy. This last might not mean anything—it _could_ be a ruse—but it’s as comforting as it is painful. There’s a computer and entertainment center in the corner, next to it a bookshelf covered in dog-eared paperbacks, hardbacks, comics, trophies, photos, myriad other knickknacks. A guitar leans against the far wall. The window is frosted and gleaming palest silver under the sheer, blue-patterned curtains. If Conner’s here, he’s not in this room.

I try to sit up, and catch my breath at the pain. I hold it, try again, and barely even lift my neck. I make an effort to call for him, except my voice is trapped in my chest, and only a whisper of air whistles out of my throat. I give it another series of attempts, and lie back, exhausted, unable now even to draw a breath without my limbs going dead weak. 

There’s a click from my right as the door opens, and, fatigue forgotten in a blink, I reflexively jerk, pulling away from the intruder, casting for an out. My heart flies against my ribs, and my free arm goes up to defend myself as an elderly man, stooped and thin with a shock of white hair and a close-cropped beard, enters the room. He’s carrying a black dopp kit. Not really caring to know what’s in there, I shrink back as best I can in my immobile posture as he approaches my bedside.

“Where’s my son,” I try to ask through the reeds in my throat, discouraged at the husky, feeble hum of my voice as it’s lost somewhere in my pharynx. My question doesn’t even formulate into sound; my query remains unmade. 

“Slow down now,” my unwanted companion tells me gently, sitting heavily down in a chair next to the bed, and setting the kit on the floor. “You’ve been through a lot, might be a while before you can talk comfortably.”

“Where’s my son,” I try again, failing beyond an unintelligible, whistling groan, and fighting against the folds of the blankets and pillows to sit up and get into a position more threatening. I don’t know who this guy is, and I don’t care if he seems old and innocuous and looks like a skinny, less-bearded, Chicano Santa Claus—the odds are stacked that he has my kid, and I don’t know under what circumstances he’s holding him. And if that’s _not_ the case here, and Conner is, in fact, a free bird somewhere wandering the wild and I’m here on my own, I can’t think of one good reason this man would have kept me alive. Civilians get some seriously big payoffs if they turn in rogue Sams. I couldn’t even tick off a fly in December in my current state, but this old dude doesn’t need to keep thinking that, so I get as upright as I can, my arm hefted in a defensive position.

The old man slowly lifts his hands in a palliative gesture, sitting poised on the edge of his chair, his face placating and, if anything, fearful.

“I’m not going to hurt you, son,” he tells me in his wavering voice, a voice that is all at once warm, kind, hoarse and weary. “I’m not going to hurt you.” 

I relax a little, just enough to lure this old guy into a false sense of security in case he’s _not_ on the up-and-up, and not so much that I effectively let my guard down, either. As for the old man, he settles into his seat with a series of deafening creaks, and sits for a moment, catching his breath, his efforts reflecting mine. “Sorry. This weather’s damn hard on my ticker.” He chuckles ruefully. “Getting along in years, although God only knows how—must be by His mercy alone. Anyhow—I’m real glad to see you seem to be making some progress, son. Real glad.”

I stare wordlessly at him.

“We were all sure you weren’t going to last the first night, let alone pull through,” he explains. He gives me a look, one unexpectedly concerned and attentive, and that I suppose seems kind on the surface. I keep my arm up. “Really gave us all quite a fright.”

I can’t help wondering—again—if this is a dream, given that it strangely mirrors the time I woke up after getting my ass handed to me by the Marauders the first time to have a glaringly similar conversation with Bruce. Still, dream or no, Conner is unaccounted for, and I’m out of my damn skull. 

“Where—is—my—son,” I murmur, issuing each word carefully as possible, managing to craft each one into an audible whisper. 

“Oh, your son’s fine, don’t worry,” the man says earnestly. “You know, I really didn’t expect you to be awake, I was going to take a look and see how those wounds are healing, give you some medicine, but… Well, here. Just sit tight a second.”

He vanishes out the door, and I lie in bed, prone, helpless, immobile, every nerve shaking and tense. There’s a sense that something’s not right, that something’s _seriously_ wrong somewhere, even if I can’t fully place what it might be just now. I pray this nebulous feeling of wrongness has nothing to do with Conner, and grip the sheets in spasmodic fistfuls as I wait. 

The door creaks, and as I turn my head to look, I hear my son’s voice as he bursts into the room in a tartan blur, Wolf a flurry of white at his side.

“Dad!”

And with that, his arms are wrapped around my neck, tangling with the blankets and sheets, jostling me against the headboard. In disbelief, I slowly reach up and embrace him with my free arm, unsure if he’s even real. I tighten my grip on him, turn my face into the familiar crook of his neck, grasp the well-known texture of his hair, inhale his accustomed scent. 

It’s him.

He’s real. 

He’s alive.

I can’t help it. I start to cry.

I adjust my hold, weeping my overload of relief into his neck. After some time spent like this, he tries pulling back once or twice, but I keep him close, unwilling now to release him. 

Finally, I let him go, and with my hand on his arm, I study him. He’s still wearing his own coat, but it’s laundered and pressed, dusted with a few bits of melted snow. His face is clean and has all of its color back, his black hair is shiny, trimmed, and tousled to passable neatness. The jeans he wears are too big for him and dated in style, but they’ve been cuffed at the ankles, and I’m guessing belted or taken in at the waist. Wherever we are, he’s been well cared for and looked after. Wolf also is clean, his fur combed out into its usual fluffy, snowy cloud, his nails trimmed and eyes bright. A bandage is wrapped tidily around his foreleg, others are interspersed over his body. 

Definitely not with the enemy—or at least, not the pressing enemy. 

“Are you hurt?” I ask, pushing my voice out of my throat, the whole process of speaking like pushing a sludgy, resistant ream of sand through a stubborn sieve. I can scarcely whisper, but Conner hears me well enough, leaning in close to pick out what I’m saying.

He shakes his head. “No, I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Juan and Molly have been super nice. They have _so_ much food, Dad—they let me have as much as I want, whenever I want, and I even got to have waffles with raspberries and cream this morning.”

“Good,” I say with relief. I’m starting to believe with some real grounds that we’re not in danger, at least for right now. 

I’m about to ask Conner more questions when Wolf insistently paws at my arm, and with a weak greeting, I reach down to him. He lifts his head into my palm, his jaws parted in a lupine smile. 

“What about…” I pause, my heart without warning flapping wildly, my stomach going cripplingly sick. I take a breath. Another. When I’ve tolerably gathered myself, I speak. “What about the Marauders, did they hurt you?”

He, again, shakes his head. “No. They all ran after I cast those spells. They haven’t been back. I don’t think they know we’re here. I pressed the distress button on my communicator… but Artemis and Kaldur haven’t shown up.”

I feel a tickle of disquiet at this. “How long?”

“Umm…” He frowns, thinking. “Ten days, I think? Longer, maybe. Feels like a while.”

I’m silent, my brain turning in restless circles, so many memories growling somewhere in the back of my mind; all of them shifting somewhere just out of sight, silhouetted, waiting for the first opportunity to spring, like monsters in the woods. I focus on the fact that if our hosts wanted to turn us over to the Light, they’d probably have done it by now, and do my damnedest to leave the unseen monster memories out of sight in the forest of my thoughts. I know, innately, that I _want_ them to remain immaterial, unrealized.

“After they left,” Conner continues, “I tried a healing spell.” 

My heart does a back flip that about kicks my stomach out through my chest, the shadow monsters mercifully dismissed, but replaced now by this now horrific realization. “Oh, my God. Conner—” My voice breaks off, and I rasp a hiss of wordless air at him.

He stares at a corner of the comforter, with something like shame on his face, not heeding my horrified puffs of breath. “I didn’t do a real good job, though.”

“Whatever you did,” says the old man, entering the room, “it saved your father’s life, and about knocked out yours—good job or not.” He pauses, frowning down at me. “He was dead to the world for a good five days. My wife and I thought we were going to lose you both.”

I stare at my son, and I shake my head. “Conner. Look at me a second.”

He does.

“No matter what happens, no matter how bad it seems, no matter who it is— _don’t_ try one again,” I wheeze at him.

“Dad, I _had_ to,” he insists. “I thought I could do it—”

“No. Those spells will _finish_ you. Even your mom and grandfather _never_ tried one—” I take a rattling breath, my throat and chest crying mutiny and cutting me off at that last word. I steady my respiration, inhaling through my nose, releasing breath through my mouth. In, out; in, out. Cooperatively, my heart slows, recuperating steadily from the effort of speaking. I remember something about Conner and his magic—something critical, something I feel I should recollect in specificity, something seriously urgent. If I recall to mind these memories, though, there’s a part of me that knows that the shadow monsters will come with them. 

“You were going to die,” Conner says. 

I shake my head, and rest my hand on his wrist. “Better me than you, kiddo.”

“I had to try,” says the boy. 

The old man, Juan, I’m guessing, grasps his shoulder. “It was a brave thing you did. And the _right_ thing.”

I would protest, but I’m really starting to lack the strength. It’s all I can do to stay awake. I don't even feel the urge to hit the restroom anymore. Although I can tell the room is drafty, the bed itself is intoxicatingly warm, soothing my discomfort by feeding the permeating fatigue that steals over me, lulling me into spells of half-consciousness that blend into the folds of waking moments. 

“Dad,” Conner murmurs. 

I hum a sound of acknowledgement, coasting somewhere between sleeping and waking, aware of the external world, but adrift in my own partially formed dreams.

“I’m sorry about everything I said. And did.” 

Conner’s voice is small, tight, uncomfortable. I open my eyes, grounded in wakefulness now, and I take his hand and squeeze it. Inherently, I know what he’s talking about, but the specifics are boxed, shelved—for now.

“Don’t be sorry,” I tell him. “You weren’t wrong, Conner.”

He shakes his head vehemently. “No, I was.” He pauses. “…You were right about them.”

I’m silent.

“I’m so sorry, Dad.”

I look over at him, and shake my head. I reach over and clasp the side of his face. “Conner. Don’t be. I mean it.”

He gazes helplessly at me, his eyes full.

“It’s my fault, though.”

“Stop it.”

“I should have acted sooner. I shouldn’t have just sat there. _Everything_ is my fault.” He sniffs. “I’m a coward.”

I do my best to pull myself up a bit more. “Conner, stop it. It’s not _.”_ Speaking this loudly hurts my throat, and I struggle for a moment to clear it before I continue. “ _None_ of this is your fault. You did _nothing_ wrong. Understand?”

He’s quiet, staring at the floor. One tear drops over his cheek. I lay a hand on his arm. “Conner.”

He looks up at me.

“I really wish you hadn’t risked yourself the way you did. But if you hadn’t…” I pause, breathe. I’m winded just from speaking. “I wouldn’t be here. Listen. You did _good_. Mom—and Grandpa—would have been _very_ proud of you.” I squeeze his arm. “Timing comes with practice. You’re _not_ a coward. You did good. Okay?”

“It’s what a Leaguer would have done,” he murmurs, wiping his cheek. “Right?”

I nod. “It’s what a Leaguer would have done.”

He gives me half a smile. “Don’t scare me like that, Dad.”

Again, I squeeze his arm. “It’s a promise.”

“Best let your dad rest a bit now,” says Juan. He looks over at me. “You in pain, son?”

I am, even if I’m too drunkenly fatigued to register a lot of it. I nod. 

“All right, I’ve got some things might help,” he murmurs, going through the dopp kit. He produces two small, round, white tablets. There’s a glass of water on the nightstand, and Conner assists me in swallowing the pills with a swig of water.

“What are they,” I murmur.

“Naproxen,” Juan says. “I know it’s not real heavy duty, but it might take some of the edge off.”

“Thank you,” I tell him, leaning back into the pillows. 

“Dad,” says Conner.

“Hmm.” I can’t, as hard as I try, keep my eyes open.

“I love you.”

I can barely whisper, but in my enormous relief and gratitude, I manage.

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND HELLO SHAMELESS MACGUFFIN... :D :D :D 
> 
> There IS a connection between these new characters and our heroes, though... :-) Hopefully a decent and believable one. :D 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! ^_^ <3 <3 
> 
> Much love! <3 
> 
> xoxoxoxo
> 
> ~EF


	17. Rapping, Rapping At My Chamber Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all! ^_^ 
> 
> Hope all is grand... :-)
> 
> I have to say it--I just have to--this was arguably one of the most difficult, challenging, and arduous chapters I've ever tackled. XD To depict a traumatic event is one thing, and generally challenging enough. To attempt depicting the emotional/personal aftermath of an event, quite another. Having finished it, I think I might have to go faceplant and not move for a week. XD
> 
> Here's praying I didn't hopelessly bonk the endeavor... :-) 
> 
> Much love, dears. ^_^
> 
> ~EF <3 <3

_“Ha, listen to him whining.”_

_“…Let’s play Russian Roulette with his asshole.”_

_“Oh, yeah, achievement unlocked, finally fucked the Prom Queen—”_

_Voices, flickering in and out of my ears, pinging through my skull, sinking nettling teeth into my gut. Hands yanking fistfuls of my hair, squeezing hotter than branding irons around my wrists, digging like blistering pokers into my ankles, reverberating shocks of agony through the gunshot wound to my thigh. The constant friction of scratchy clothing raking over the exposed skin of my back, pine needles clawing my chest and face, the white-hot, searing pressure unceasing in places long since pressed beyond feeling._

_Gnashing, serrated teeth, rank breath, bone-crunching weight, lantern-like eyes, bellowing pain, the grisly_ pop _of a dislodging bone, leaping fire, white lightning, spiraling into the air and consuming the form of my son—_

I jerk awake, the sheets drenched and cleaving to my bare, bandaged torso, my breath ragged and gasping in my throat. My cheek prickles in the cold air and my tongue is three sizes too big for my parched mouth. The room is pitchy dark, save for the sallow, hushed glow of the weak, chalky moonlight breaking its way through the mantle of remaining soot. 

I fall back against the pillows, my heart sprinting at greyhound speed, my chest leaping under the wet sheets. 

“Dad?”

I look over, and see that Conner, again, has joined me in my appropriated sick bed. So he’s told me, after so much time lying jammed together under piles of blankets, sleep has been difficult to find when lying alone in a room still strange to him, in spite of the time we’ve spent in this old farmhouse. Whether this is what truly motivates this co-sleeping, something that he’s arguably far too old for, or if it’s something else—fear, anxiety, insecurity—I don’t know, but I don’t plan to press him on it. I can’t say it out loud, to him or to anyone else, but his closeness comforts me when, frankly, little else does. 

Still, his presence doesn’t fully stay the shivering beginning in my core, a chill fountaining from deeper than the cold of the air in the drafty bedroom. 

For as much as I struggled to keep the encounter with the Marauders entrenched and formless beneath the groundcover in the forest of my mind, since the first nightmare upon waking in this old house I’ve lain wide awake, or in a restless doze riddled with livid dreams, every muscle in my body leaden and overwrought. The fact that just about every nanometer of my body screams with pain barely dulled by the NSAIDs Juan has been giving me with faithful regularity only emphasizes the unrelenting soreness and hot, tetchy burning that refuses to let up even for a second in my backside, groin, and hips. 

“Dad,” says Conner, sitting up, and looking over at me. “You okay?”

I sigh, rest a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, sorry, kiddo,” I tell him, my voice raspy and tight. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

Wolf, curled at the foot of the bed, barely able to fit his burly mass atop the mattress with us, stretches his forelegs, and yawns. Conner nods, and nestles down under the blankets. 

I lie, a tight knot of wadded muscle so ramrod tense I’m nearly suspended from the surface of the bed. Trapped in the sense that I’m locked in the oppression state of demonic infestation, I stare at the ceiling, wrangling with calming my racing heart and slowing my frantic breathing. The now accustomed trembling rushes through my limbs, a sense of despotic, bomb-loud, nebulous apprehension unfurling from my core, and the childish desire for a light to dispel the darkness of the room all at once overpowers me. When I can’t stand it anymore, I reach over, and with a match, light the candle on the nightstand. There’s no electricity at this hour. A small bit of comfort is afforded when the room goes from pitch dark to a soft, shadowy orange. 

I release a breath, watch it condense pale sunburst on the chilly air, and lay a hand on my son’s hair. Cold and shaking in the pools of sweat forming on and dribbling from my flesh, I hash an effort at shaking the feeling that my skin is constricting around my muscles, crawling, shifting, begging to be shed, like a giant, humanoid snake skin. I wonder if I wouldn’t indulge this feeling, were there a straight razor within reach. My own flesh feels like a filthy, ill-fitting straitjacket, one I can’t rid myself of in short enough order—an unwanted ensemble that wraps me up in it, pressing me suffocatingly tight within its folds. And when this restraint loosens, I know I’ll find myself crushed beneath some vast, invisible weight, greater than a steam brig, my limbs boggy and weak, inert, unmoving, _unable_ to move, the straitjacket now laced around my ribs, pressing down on my heart and guttering my breath.

I know I’ve seen a _lot_ of ugly shit in my day—after the Horsemen, sure, but irrefutably, before, as well. Arguably more than most, even nowadays in this apocalyptic world with its circus of horrors—not to sound self-pitying. All of the Ugly Shit Events still ghost along in the wake of my steps, not always obstreperously enough to call notice to them, whatever they might be, but intermittently—metamorphosing into images, sounds, scents, feelings that leap into my recollection with such staggering, corporeal clarity that I often lose my grasp on what’s real until these abrupt remembrances fade into memory.

One of these Ugly Shit Events has been _glaring_ since I came to, now that all of the memories of the encounter with the Marauders are starkly, grotesquely clear within my anamnesis, all of it like a color wheel, with these particular complementary colors of the old memory and the new highlighted in blazing delineation against the shifting, mixing palette of thoughts and images beneath. 

Barbara and I, one night on patrol in Gotham City, back when I was maybe twenty or so (was I _ever_ that young—those hypnagogic years recall themselves with the gossamer quality of a daydream at this point), happened upon a girl who was full-blown assaulted in an alley behind a bar. It’s an image that, like so many others, continuously replays itself unsolicited in an unending loop on the backs of my eyelids. Her dress was hiked up into a tangled mass of cotton around her neck, her undergarments discarded in tattered wads, her honey-colored hair red with streaks of blood from her bleeding nose and forehead. Her attacker didn’t even notice us until I tooth and nail hauled him away from her, and then full-body tackled him when he cast an effort at escape. Barbara called it in, comforting and sitting with the girl, as I practically sat on the attacker until the police arrived on the scene. The entire time we waited, I ignored his threats to sue me for aggravated assault, battery, holding him against his will, God only knows (and cares) what else. His father was a fabulously wealthy surgeon, he cried. His uncle was a top criminal attorney, he cried. My ass would be sorry when his father and uncle heard about this! _God,_ I wanted nothing more than to see that entitled piece of shit thrown into federal pound-you-in-the-ass-prison—what I saw that night _spoliated_ me. I cried giving my witness’ statement—hard enough that Jim came around to my side of the table and stood, his hand on my shoulder, until I got my shit together. 

Imagine my shock when, some months later after building a case against him, this girl dropped all charges against her assailant. 

Distraught, I sought her out, as Nightwing, to ask her _why_. 

“Listen,” she said, running a hand self-consciously over her hair, and then covering her throat and collarbones with her palm, as though drawing a scarf toward her neck. “…I don’t want to go through all the song and dance of what I was wearing, how much I drank, how often I party, what my grades are, who my friends are, what my family’s like, whether I’m good at my job, how many boyfriends do I have, do I have a rep for putting out, all that crap. The rape kit was bad enough—seriously, I just wanted to go home and take a really long, really hot shower and get in _bed_. Going to trial? I just… I can’t. I just _can’t_. Okay?”

I frowned, my jaw working, my crossed arms tight across my chest. 

“I understand that,” I said after a moment, “really, I do, but you _have_ to think big picture here—if he can do this to you and get away with it, nothing’s going to stop him from doing it again. And then _that_ person will have to endure all those same questions, and maybe other girls will have to besides—”

“Nightwing, I get that—but right now, I don’t care. I can’t. I just want to be left alone. Do you know how much hate mail I’ve gotten? Cyber-bullying? Legit bullying? How many death threats? I can’t even go to class without being called a lying whore twenty times. I might just change my name and transfer schools, it’s not like this identity is something I want to hang onto anymore, anyway. God, I’m not even a _rape victim_ by identity—I’m just some slut who can’t handle her liquor and lied about getting raped after Gotham U’s star hockey player rejected her and her messy life with all its problems with alcohol and men.”

I lifted a hand, lowered it in a conciliating motion. “I know it’s been hard. Trust me, I’ve seen the social media posts. But try to stay whelmed. You’ve gotten a lot of support on social media, too, you know. And outside. From your classmates, the police, Young Justice, the Justice League, your family, your friends. You’ll get the chance to tell your side—the side that’s the _truth—_ and not only will the evidence back everything up, but Batgirl and I, the detectives, the doctors, we’ll all be there to corroborate you and support you—”

Her expression stalled my words. “Do you really think anyone cares about my side? Or the evidence? Or even about you and Batgirl having my back? Will it matter in the end? Because all anyone really sees from that asshole is he was my brother’s friend, we were on a date, I drank too much, and he’s the star center on Gotham U’s hockey team. And you know how they love their stupid hockey.” She heaved a sigh. “I just want to _try_ to get on with my life, Nightwing. I can still change schools, I can still go by a different name, I can still dye my hair and gain forty pounds and just try to leave all this behind.”

“…Is that going to solve anything?”

“Is there any solving something like this?” She sighed. “The only thing that’s going to come of a trial is he’ll get off by having his daddy the famous surgeon and his uncle the almighty lawyer pay off the courts. Then they’ll let him keep going to school and playing hockey here as though he didn’t do a damn thing, and he’ll be walking through all the same halls I do every day.” Tears spilled over her cheeks. “And I can’t _do_ this anymore. I can’t share grounds with him, I can’t share classes with him, I can’t even share _space_ with him. I just can’t.”

I stared helplessly at her, wishing I could just reach out to her, comfort her, promise her that, whether she believed it, we had the means to see justice done, me and mine, that she wouldn’t have to endure this horror forever, that that bastard would answer for what he’d done to her. But I couldn’t. I knew then, and definitely know now, that there’s precious little comfort for this.

“I appreciate everything you and Batgirl, and everyone else, have done for me,” she said before I could speak. “Really, I do. Every time someone calls me a whore, or a liar, I just try to remember that you guys don’t think that. I know you believe me.”

“How could we not?” I asked her.

“How could anyone not?” she said sadly. Then, she sighed. “…It doesn’t matter. Enough don’t. So… I can’t do a trial. I’m sorry.” 

With that, she backed abruptly into her dorm room, and the door clicked shut.

It took every iota of restraint I did (or didn’t) have _not_ to track the guy down and make careful _sure_ he paid for what he did—and that he’d never do it again. 

“I ought to cut his fucking nuts off,” I stormed at Jason barely an hour later. “String them up on a necklace and make him wear it. Penis can be the center piece.”

“Say the word and I’ll do it for ya,” said Jason. 

I snorted.

“I’m totally serious, dude,” Jason said, turning around to let his gaze follow my manic pacing from where he sat on the couch in my apartment. “I’m no Leaguer, I’m Red Hood—like _I_ care about castrating some shitpile rapist. Beyond doing society a world of good.”

I shook my head. “Step off. _I’d_ want to be the one to do it.”

“Well, are you going to or not, then?” he asked. “Because seriously—you need to shit or get off the pot. Before that asshole does it again.”

“Yeah, don’t tempt me.”

I never _did_ go after the guy—for as much as I wanted to get off the pot and make good on my new jewelry-making venture. The most I did was leave him a typed, anonymous letter in a spot where I knew he’d find it among the piles of love mail and hate mail I knew he was constantly bombed with. Find it, he did, and as I kept to a camouflaged spot at a patio table with Jason at a smoothie place across the street from that monster’s lair, I surreptitiously kept a far-off eye on him as he read it. I felt at least _some_ satisfaction when he looked around nervously, as though I stood behind him, waiting to pounce. Speaking of temptation. 

If that girl had to live with the idea that external, forcible, uninvited hands had reached into her and molded her identity from a sweet, Midwestern biology major with a high school letter in volleyball into a rape victim, a liar, a whore, a tragedy—that beast should have been reminded of what _his_ identity was. He was not a star hockey player. He was not an outstanding student. He was not a “fun-loving, good-natured guy,” as his teammate attested. He was a rapist. He was a predator. He was a criminal. He was a monster. And _I_ knew it. And that’s what that letter stated. He no longer hid in plain sight. I—and others—knew damn well who and what he was.

I exhale, shiver, and let my anxious, hectic thoughts dwell on who _I_ am now, with every identity now a glove that splits at the fingers, no longer fitting, no longer even mine; as though all of my molecules have been scrambled and shoddily reassembled into something not even distantly resembling its former whole. If Bruce were to come and run my DNA against a prior sample, I feel like it wouldn’t match. 

What identity am I now at home in, after this.

Sam. Hood. Nightwing. Robin. Flying Grayson. 

Near murderer.

Rape victim.

I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut, as though by shutting them, I can shut this last out of my mind and body, a figurative door slamming in its face and locking it out for good.

Still, it’s there, and I can hear it, Poe’s raven, rapping, rapping at my chamber door. 

Will I be the same, I wonder, in five minutes, tomorrow, in five years, hell— _ever?_

I burrow into the blankets, sick of lying on my back, wanting to curl up on my side, but physically unable to shift into any other position. For as burdened and heavy as my limbs feel, there’s the pervasive, undying sense that millions of scrabbling, shuffling insects with countless sharp, needling feelers rove through my veins beneath my skin. And try as I might, and for as inert as my body lies beneath these sheets, I can’t relax. I recall more words from the victim I tried to help all those years ago, bellowing with the brazen volume of a siren between my ears now—

“I can’t calm down. I can’t relax. It’s like I’ve seen a monster. And no matter where I go or what I do, I’m not safe.”

I can feel my muscles vibrating, every nerve alive and on tenterhooks, every instinct screaming that I’m not safe, that I sleep with an evil presence in the room. Like I, too, have seen a monster, that even now slumbers in the closet, under the bed, behind the curtains. But for all the wish that I could leap from this bed and sprint, sprint, sprint into the wilderness, sprint until I can sprint no more, sprint until I fall off the edge of the earth and escape into a pit of merciful nonexistence—I can’t move, and not singly because I’m too enormous a mess for a lot of mobility. It’s as though the blood within my veins has been replaced with a dull, heavy, iron substance, something sludgy, slow-moving, and that weights down my entire body, leaving me crushed from within, incapable of movement, even as my skin scuttles and burns. 

I expel a breath into the air, feeling the unending discomfort as it lances through my plethora of injuries when I shift my weight under the blankets. The shakes and sweating worsen, magnified now by the pain. How long has it been? Ten days, Conner had said, add two or three by my bewildered figuring. And still I can’t move out of this bed or even sit up on my own, the agony of attempting as much positively stupefying. A direly-needed trip to the bathroom was bought half-lurching with my good arm slung uncomfortably over Juan’s shoulders, every single one of my crying nerve endings inexplicably rolling away from the unseen waves of body heat that he emitted, practically _feeling_ them connecting with my skin, my heart pressed against and vibrating at my throat, responding to the strange, permeating _wrongness_ of being so close to him. When he shut the door to mercifully give me some privacy, I wound up sitting on the john, not wanting him to return to help me, unable to do anything _without_ help, until I was so dizzy I nearly pitched to my face on the tile floor of the bathroom. I broke my fall with my good arm, and rolled to my back with a _thunk._ I lay there a moment, struggling with one-handed pulling at the waist of the pajama bottoms. When Juan, with a light knock on the door to the bathroom, reentered to assist me back up, bending down to push his shoulder into the crook of my armpit and lace his arm around my side, it all proved too much. I had barely managed to resituate the pajama pants properly by that time. With one frantic, desperate, and completely involuntary heave, I shoved his thin, aging body away from me, landed hard on my painful, throbbing seat, tipped over to my side, and drew my one knee into my now bleeding abdomen, as he stumbled backwards into the door. 

I lay gasping, squeezing my eyes shut, my nerves squalling, my heart thundering with such draining fervor my whole body went weak and flaccid. Juan steadied himself, and gazed down at me, his mien quiet. 

“…Would you rather have Molly help you, son?” he asked, his voice low, gentle.

I burst into tears. 

He came and sat down on the lidded toilet, not touching me, not speaking, just sitting in silence, his staid, steady air somehow a comfort to me, until I calmed down and held one arm up to indicate that I was ready to attempt rising. I can’t even say what the hell happened to have sparked all of that.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured as Juan helped me hop-stumble-lurch down the splintery, scuffed wooden floor of the hallway in the direction of the bedroom I inhabited. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. 

The thing is, it wasn’t just Juan. When his wife, Molly, entered the room not long after the discomfiture of this already undignified bathroom break, bearing a tray with some food, she helped me sit up against the cushions, and I was astonished to feel my flesh rioting every bit as passionately against her touch. I gritted my teeth, wrestling with ignoring the panic that the feeling of her hands against the bare skin of my torso lit within me, and gave it a titanic push to get myself sitting up. I sat against the pillows for a moment, sweating, while she placed a towel and the food tray carefully over my legs (leg and a half, rather.) 

“You okay, honey?” she asked. 

I nodded, collecting myself. “…Thank you.” I paused. “Um… Where’s Conner?”

“Downstairs eating with Juan,” she replied. “He said to tell you he’d be up once he’s done.”

I nodded, wishing he’d come back upstairs, unexplainably lonesome for him. Molly gestured at the array of food. 

“Is this all stuff you like okay?” she queried.

I gave her a half-hearted smile, with a wholehearted gratitude. “It’s fine,” I told her. “I’m not picky.”

She smiled in return, and I felt a little more at ease. Molly has proven to be every bit as likable as her spouse (ostensibly, so far.) She’s a kind-faced, handsome older woman, her short, dreadlocked hair almost always pulled away from her lined forehead beneath a bandana, her build solid and safe. There are weathered crinkles around her eyes and indentures around her mouth that evoke wisdom, not age, and a quiet, warm tranquility to her demeanor that founts from deep within. 

“Where did you get all this?” I asked, looking down at the tray. There was a plate with an omelet, and a bowl holding a dollop of what looked like yogurt and raspberries. A dark, bitter-smelling tea steamed in a mug next to a glass of remarkably clean water. 

“Oh, we grow it all here,” she said. “Most of that came from our barn.”

I look up at her, a sinking feeling in my chest. “…You have a greenhouse in there?”

She nodded. “That we do. We grow stuff like fruits, veggies, herbs, so on. It’s not much, but it’s better than rations alone. Plus, we’ve been hoarding canned goods and jarring foods since the Horsemen first came. Juan was a military man when he was young—saw three wars as a medic before he ended his tour of duty. Really gave him a leg-up on how to survive just about any situation.”

“That would,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. “You have animals?”

She smiled. “We do. Not many. Chickens and a cow. We had a hog, but we slaughtered it a few months ago. Still have plenty of the meat left.”

I was silent as I stared down at the food, all at once feeling ill.

“I understand if you’re not feeling well,” said Molly, “but try to eat, okay? You need to get your strength up.”

I didn’t reply, gazing at the tray, my abdomen slowly descending. 

“Well,” said Molly. “I’ll leave you to it. Conner will be up shortly. There’s a bell there on the nightstand—if you need anything, just ring it, and one of us will come up, all right?”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. 

She nodded, and left the room.

I stared at the food until the omelet congealed, and then forced myself to give some of the food a try. Surprisingly, once I got started, I realized I was ravenous. When the door to the bedroom opened, I had already cleaned everything off the tray and was working on the tea. 

Expecting Conner, I was let down a bit to see Juan, although his appearances no longer turned my stomach and set me on edge. 

“Need some painkillers?” he asked. 

I did. I nodded. 

He removed the tray, leaving the tea and water on the nightstand, and gave me two of the small, white Naproxen pills. I took them, and just lobbed up a skyward prayer that they’d dull even an infinitesimal fraction of the pain. 

“You okay with me checking that wound on your belly there?” Juan asked. 

“…I can do it,” I said, and then barked a humorless laugh at my own ludicrous words. With one arm bound up under a shredded, mangled shoulder, broken ribs, painful, knobby bruises scattered like a watercolor painting all over my back and sides, one leg severed (and that I _swear_ I still feel, prickling, going numb, falling asleep, the now missing gunshot wound bellowing, my calf with its old injury throbbing in the cold), half my guts yanked out and somehow shoved back where they belong, and other injuries I’d rather not think of but have me still lying atop a folded towel—self-doctoring might be a tad absurd. 

“You can try,” Juan said with a smile, “but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

I heaved a sigh, and leaned back. “…Okay.”

“I’ll be quick about it,” he said. “Just relax.”

Feeling his fingers questing about the bandages, I felt my guts roll and shift, and I grasped at the bed sheet with my good hand. Juan reached over and unexpectedly clasped my undamaged shoulder after he’d scoped my abdomen—which was lanced with raw, deep purple, bruised, uneven lacerations, stitched and glued beneath the bandages. 

“Dick,” he said gently. “I’m not going to hurt you. Okay, son?”

I eyed him, unsure of what was coming next, my skin scrabbling uncomfortably. Juan sat down on the edge of the bed, and rested his elbows on his knees. 

“Listen,” he told me, after a moment. “I know you, who you are. You’re Nightwing. The first Robin. Dick Grayson.”

I felt my heart start up its frantic jackhammering, my nerves coming alive and filling with potential energy, even if I was in no condition to fight. It didn’t surprise me, necessarily, that he knew me—plenty of television broadcasts run by the Light advertised the faces and identities of known fugitive Sams—but I was less inclined now to believe that he wasn’t planning on handing us over to Savage, after all. 

“As you can see,” Juan continued, gesturing at the Superboy poster, “my son was a fan of your teammate. And the rest of your team. So are my wife and I.”

I leaned forward, no longer caring about the kindness the old couple had shown us hitherto. “The Light gives some pretty big rewards if you turn in rogue Sams. What’s to stop me believing you haven’t just set us up? Getting us all fat and happy like a couple of goddamn prize pigs?”

Juan sighed, and pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose. 

When he spoke, his voice was exhausted, mechanical, monotone.

“My son was murdered last year,” he said in that dull, one-tone voice. “By Savage’s men. I don’t think it was the same group that caught up with you and Conner, I mean, there are so _many,_ and all of them different, but there’s no doubt in my mind it was one of those especially bad Marauder gangs. Molly and I had left to pick up rations in town—which can really be an all-day thing, depending on the time of year, the weather, the amount of rations available, and so on, and Javi stayed behind to guard the farm.” He paused, and ran a hand over his beard. “And when we got back… our house and barn had been robbed, looted, vandalized, our animals taken, and my son was just… lying dead in the middle of it. They’d shot him eight times.” Juan paused. “He was only thirty-four years old.”

I said nothing, sensing my weight as it sank into the bed beneath me. The fist inside me involuntarily loosened. 

“Listen, son,” Juan said. “We might as well talk about this now, get it out of the way, clear the air. I _know_ you were in my barn last month.”

My stomach lurched. Damn it—so this _was_ the farm that I had stolen from, just before Conner and I both took sick.

He nodded. “Yeah, I know it was you. I had my rifle trained on your head the entire time,” he told me. “From the loft. Which I blocked off after last year.”

I felt my limbs start to tremble, the fist, again, tightening in my gut. “…Why didn’t you pull the trigger?” I asked.

He was quiet a moment, pensively staring at the floor. “…How desperate you looked. The way you treated my animals, how gentle you were with them. How _little_ you actually took, in the end. And then, the fact that you took care of the cow and chickens, and fixed the door to the greenhouse,” he replied. “That was something I swore I’d get around to doing, but didn’t have the heart to.” He sighed. “Every time I looked at that door… I got reminded of Javi. He was lying on top of that door when we found him. Like they shot him, and knocked the door off the hinges and just dragged both of their way. I knew we could lose the greenhouse if I left the door just half-fixed like that, but…” He shook his head.

I stared at the coverlet in silence, the fist moving from my stomach into my chest. 

“And then, I saw the boy, with his wolf, when you left the barn,” said Juan. “Dick, I had a son, too. I couldn’t pull the trigger on a man trying to protect and feed his child. And who didn’t _rob_ us _,_ and who did what little he could in the way of payment. You weren’t one of those bastard Marauders, just coming in and taking everything their disgusting mitts could carry and killing anyone who got in the way.” 

My tongue felt swollen, filling my mouth to the roof, pressing against my teeth. 

“…I’m sorry, Juan,” I said weakly. 

“Don’t apologize,” he told me. “If anything, I feel like I should thank you for not robbing us blind. And… for taking care of the animals and for fixing the door.”

I stayed quiet, staring at my hand, hating it, hating myself. 

“We’re all only human here, Dick,” said Juan. 

When I still didn’t reply, he sighed, and murmured, “I’ll send Conner up.”

Lying in bed in the shadowy candle light, now, I rake my good hand over my hair, tangibly oily and in need of a shampoo, my face covered in a bristly overgrowth of beard. The afternoon was spent pretending to rest while Conner read silently from one of the books Juan had let him take from Javi’s bookshelves. Even sleeping in full daylight has brought no promise of a lack of bad dreams. I lay in quiet next to my son, my mind shuffling through its overload of half-formed thoughts, my body deadened and vibrating all at once, until I finally drifted off. 

And then, the nightmares. 

And here I am now.

Once, it frustrated me—angered me, even—that so many victims refused to press charges against their attackers, even when viewing the cases with an empathetic eye. How was justice to be done if they wouldn’t even _try?_ But now, I find myself profoundly relating to them—just the _thought_ of speaking out loud to anyone of what happened stirs up a sickening, rolling panic within me. I’m not entirely sure I’d even tell Zatanna, if she were alive. All I want is to scour my skin with soap beneath a screaming hot shower, and then lie in this bed, unmoving, not to venture from beneath the comforter—just like that girl. 

There’s a part of me that’s actually _grateful_ to be as injured as I am. No one expects me to do anything other than just that—lie in bed, focus on recovering, get well. But I know that soon enough, I’ll start to get better—and then I’ll have to get out of this bed. And then… Adjust. Adapt. The game I’ve played all throughout the duration of my life. 

Whatever the future means for adjusting and adapting, the world itself has shifted, even beyond its new curtain of apocalyptic waste, even beyond its swing in power. Sure, it still turns in its usual rotation, oblivious to all that transpires on its surface, on its unchanging axis, but it has, incontestably, forever and irrevocably changed, just like the trillions of cells in my body have fundamentally done the same. While the world moves at the same pace and in the same way for everyone else—it’s gone still, stagnant, rancid for me, ignoring the motions of all those who pass by at their ordinary rate. 

Tears leak and stream in hot, slow rivulets over my cheeks, sliding down along the contours of my jaw, trapping in the coarse, itchy hairs of the new, unaccustomed beard, thick and bushy, when I dwell on the definition and connotation of the word _change._ I’ve come a _long_ damn way from Nightwing. This atom-deep alteration began some time ago. If I had just been more vigilant, on guard, focused. If I had just remembered my training—all of the training spent on the all-important mind over matter, on focus— _block out all emotions, Dick, channel all feelings, funnel all stimuli_. I would have seen the bastards coming. They would never have caught up to us. If I hadn’t dragged Demetrius off—unprovoked, needlessly—in the first place. If I hadn’t _caused_ all of this, orchestrated it by my own hand. The victim I knew had been blameless. Was I? How would _my_ trial pan out? 

Wolf nestles up closer to me, shifting up between Conner and me, resting his head on my chest, positioning himself so that he doesn’t rest any weight on my injuries. I reach up, and hug his broad, hairy shoulders with my one good arm. 

Was it, all of it, punishment? Recompense for what I did? My just desserts? Cashing in on a karmic debt? My chest hitches, setting the wound in my shoulder ablaze in tongues of unseen flame, strangulating a crushing vice around my abdomen. I recall Demetrius’ pulpy, unrecognizable features, the flesh melting gruesomely into the skull beneath, the blood dripping vivid rouge onto the snow—the visage of my guilt. I turn my face into the pillow, now sobbing, praying the boy won’t wake, wondering if I deserved what happened. Especially considering now the terrible position in which my son found himself.

I sob harder, thinking now on this, the one thing I’ve desperately tried to shrink away from—that my son not only witnessed the whole inhuman scene, but was forced into stepping forward, taking on a responsibility astronomical units beyond those of his ten years, boldly protecting his father, protecting himself—by joining me in this place, in this pale new world, by _hurting_ his enemy. 

Yes. I deserved it. All of it. On _some_ level, by _some_ understanding, at least. I did this. I attacked Demetrius. I brought the rest of the Marauders down on our heads. I put Conner in that awful place, and brought him with me here, this treacherous world beyond the pale.

I want to reach over to my son, rest my hand on the familiar softness of his hair, pull him close, swear by God and Jesus and all of the saints and the souls of our dearly departed that I’ll watch over him, I’ll shelter him, I’ll protect him. But from what, beyond _me,_ his father, who, at this point, has become anything but blameless and nothing but a danger to him, and from the Marauders, against whom I proved virtually defenseless? I can’t even come close to understanding what I saw when Conner unleashed the scope of his mystic abilities against our enemies— _never_ have I witnessed sorcery of such intensity, not from Zatanna, not from Zatara, not from Tula, not from Kaldur, not even from Mera—the queen of the Atlantians, and a powerful sorceress, herself. The scene evoked the likes of Klarion, of Wotan, of Faust—of ugly, sacrificial, brutal dark magic. That blinding, earthshattering lightning storm that decimated the copse of trees, the campfire blasted in the span of a single breath into a ravenous conflagration that devoured the men with an almost lazy ease, the spell that kept me respiring against every goddamned odd stacked against my survival—that all of it came from my ten-year-old son, who, up to that point, could _maybe_ hold down a decent veil and spark a small flame in a portable stove, screams of overwhelming wrongness. I have no idea what it means, what it entails, what future it spells for my son. And worse, I have no idea how I can possibly protect him from it, this magic, this power, _himself._

I would wish that Zatanna were here—this would be, after all, _her_ element, her area of expertise, her natural habitat—but at the same time, I find myself _glad_ that she’s not. While the two of us against the Marauders might have been able to prove victorious and make a successful escape, I don’t want to so much as conjure up a bare bones image of how the event would have transpired had Zatanna been there—and we’d been overpowered. No, I’d rather wish for help from someone, _anyone_ else.

My sobs boot themselves back up when I think on Kaldur and Artemis, why they haven’t come, where they might be, what might be keeping them, my inability to communicate. Conner’s watch is only a locator—not a comm device. It’s also not equipped to be repurposed. I don’t want to suspect the worst, but the thought, serpentine and cruel, has slithered in a trail of slimy, stomach-wrenching images into my mind, nevertheless. They’ve succumbed to the elements, they’ve been captured, they’ve been tormented, they’ve been killed. I press my hand over my eyes, my chest painfully jumping, my throat ragged and my face gone numb, drenched in its curtain of tears. What else is there, if _they’re_ gone? Seeing Artemis’ fake-dead body all those years ago was enough to split my heart up the center like a crack zigzagging through thin ice—the idea of her _truly_ shuttled off to join our multitude of friends in that next place, with Kaldur, every bit my big brother as any brother of blood could have hoped to have been, and I feel my heart grind to a stop, my tears explode into violent, body-wracking sobs. And what the _hell_ will I do? Will Queen Mera, who’s running the show at this fabled stronghold hidden deep in the ruins of Atlantis, send Garth, Tim, Cassie, Ollie, Dinah, _any_ of them to find us? Will she really risk any of those all-important heavy hitters on two people, one of whom is now pretty much useless and will just hinder the Great Cause more than help, and the other of whom needs some _serious_ guidance and training—possibly of the kind that none of them are armed to give? 

“Dad?”

The fear in Conner’s voice swiftly lassos my up until now unstoppable torrent of crying, and, quaffing back the last remnants of my sobs, I pull myself to, and torturously move into a slightly more upright position.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, hurriedly wiping my face, as Conner sits up, his face a pale, oblong spectre in the half-light from the candle. 

“I had a bad dream, too,” he says, his voice undulating, preceding the tears that now drop swiftly down his cheeks. “A _really_ bad dream.”

He subito burrows down into my side, careful around my injured arm and abdomen, and I rest my good hand on his shoulder, murmuring a bunch of comforting words that feel hollow, of little worth, vain to my own ears. Wolf settles into the small space left by my missing left leg, resting his chin on Conner’s hip, comforting us both. 

After a moment, I ask, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Vehemently, he shakes his head. “No. No. I don’t.”

I run my hand over his hair. “Okay,” I tell him gently. “You don’t have to.”

I don’t push him to open up as he cries into the bare skin of my side, his respiration rapid and hot. I just keep my palm on his warm crown, occasionally working my fingers in the heavy tresses, until his jittery crying tapers, and his breathing evens into the steadier rhythm of sleep.

I don’t know what’s frightening him, although I can toss around a couple million guesses, all of which would be well founded. For as helpless and unworthy as I feel, though, there’s a glimmer of gratitude that my son still seeks comfort from me, that I haven’t lost him. I draw in a deep, deep lungful of air, and slowly release it, and repeat the action until my own heartbeat and breathing have composed. 

In the quiet, I gaze up at the ceiling, a muted marigold in the candlelight, and draw a breath, all at once crushed beneath an empty exhaustion so complete it consumes me in a black shade. Consoled by my son’s closeness, and by Wolf’s heavy warmth, I _finally_ let my eyes slide shut, and as the darkness overtakes me, for now silencing the cortege of horrors that traipses continually through my mind, I pray that there will be no more dreams. 


	18. Sound of Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all! <3 Hope everything is well with everyone! ^_^
> 
> First off, I am so sorry this took so long to post... I had my baby :D ^_^ So I've been a bit busy!
> 
> Second off, hopefully this reads okay, God knows I'm in a bit of a sleep-deprived fog these days... XD 
> 
> Third off, I'll TRY not to be so long between updates! :-) 
> 
> Enjoy, loves! <3 <3 <3 
> 
> xoxoxoxoxoxo  
> ~EF <3

Steam rises from the bathtub, clearing my congested nostrils, luring me to it like a siren. 

“…How’d you manage this?” I ask Molly, looking down incredulously at the hot bath drawn in the tub. 

“Found our own natural gas source,” she explains. “And groundwater supply. It took a long time—we had to drill for _years,_ and as quietly as we could to avoid drawing attention, which trust me, was _not_ easy—but we were finally able to tap into both, and on the DL. It makes life a hell of a lot easier. That hot enough?”

I reach into the water with my free hand, and all but shiver and purr. 

“Yeah, that’s hot enough, thank you,” I tell her, something of an undignified mini-orgasm in my voice. 

She nods, smiles. “Let me know if you need anything.”

When she shuts the bathroom door, I undergo the arduous process of disrobing, and slowly ease into the water, careful not to lean too much weight on my still healing arm. It’s out of its splint now, having repaired itself at an alarmingly accelerated rate, likely owed to Conner’s mystical intervention. Although the tapered end of my leg is still tender and angry, it’s no longer bleeding, the flesh closed off in ugly, purple-red indentations, lumps, and welts. The wounds on my abdomen are clearing—still there, still painful, still rendering coughing or (God forbid) sneezing impossible without skull-bursting pain—but clearing. Meaning—bathing is possible, and _long_ overdue. My skin is gritty with dried sweat, my hair so greasy it feels damp, and my face itching beneath its overgrowth of beard that’s run amok over my jawline. Any time that I make the grave error of glancing in the mirror, I do not recognize myself—the thick, oil-black cascade of heavy hair hanging to my scarred, cadaverous shoulders and the unaccustomed dense, bristly facial hair setting off the colorlessness of my bleached, sunken face call to mind a starving, anemic Wild Man of Borneo—not the fit, smoldering-eyed pretty boy I once saw peering proudly back at me. My eyes, no longer those smoldering tickets through life, are now overwhelmingly large and glazed over, feverishly glimmering and staring with an eerie, Manson-like quality. I’m not an old man, or even middle-aged, really (although I’m teetering on the knife’s edge of that once-terrifying milestone), but I can see the ravagings of premature aging laying waste to my flesh, crinkling its surface like beaten tissue paper, revealed in the deep, shadowy lines between my heavy eyebrows and across my linen-white forehead.

The water is warm and gentle on my skin, like a caress, but far less unwelcome to me at this point, as I settle back into the tub, letting my fatigued, abused muscles sink like battered stones into the bath. The steam rises about me in soft, gentle fronds, little fingers that stroke my exposed flesh. I release a breath, praying that the feeling of profound loathing for and disgust at my own skin will wash away with the blood, sweat, oil, and dirt that coat my tired body. 

It doesn’t, of course, as I soap and rinse, and soap and rinse, over and over again, scouring my skin until it goes raw. I scratch my fingers over my scalp, repeatedly lathering the wet, heavy locks of black hair, desperately fighting to claw away the sickening memory of painful, hook-like fingers yanking handfuls of the thick tresses. 

As I lie back to submerge and rinse the suds from my hair, then come back up, I draw to a pause, and hunch over my leg and a half, and watch the white foam of the shed shampoo shift and stir over the surface of the steaming water. 

_I will never make love again,_ I realize, the thought as sudden and unprompted as a randomly occurring, irrelevant epiphany. I eye my flaccid penis with an abrupt, tired, bitter hatred, and squeeze my fists closed beneath the water. 

_Don’t think about that right now. It’s not important right this second. Focus on Conner,_ I order myself. _Think on him. He needs you. You can’t be mentally checked out or focused on yourself._

I draw in a lungful of air, release it, and rest my aching head on my hand, bracing my weight on the lip of the tub. I would be grateful to divert my thoughts, but this new problem is more damn worrying than the slew of others that have built themselves into the Everest of troubles that has sprung into and blocked my path.

Just this morning after breakfast, while Conner and I sat at the kitchen table playing a game of Life (ah, the bliss of simplistic Hasbro objectives) with Wolf resting at my feet, I played my turn, and as Conner moved to spin the dial, I sprang.

“That was some serious power you leveraged against the Marauders,” I mentioned, my tone offhanded, casual.

Conner blanched as white as the unfinished milk in his glass, and I saw his hand shake as he turned the wheel to take his turn.

“I mean… Your mom had a lot of oomph, and so did your grandfather,” I continued, passively repeating my turn, cursing when I got a lousy spin. I turned my gaze to him, keeping my features schooled and calm. “Not sure I’ve ever seen anything _quite_ like that, though…”

Conner gnawed his lip. “…Hmm.” With intense focus, he spun the wheel, moved his piece, and stuck a peg in the little plastic car. 

“Where’d you learn those spells?” I asked.

“Mom,” he said vaguely, not watching as I ran through my turn. 

“Conner,” I said, gentling my voice, hiding my own fierce worry, knowing that I was starting to sound scarily like Nightwing, Secretive-All-Business-Sometimes-Jerk-Off-Second-in-Command of Young Justice, “I’m your dad. You can tell me about what happened, okay? You’re not in any trouble. No one’s angry, no one’s upset. I’m just trying to understand what happened.”

He shrugged, his face going red in the cheeks and white everywhere else. “Well, maybe I’m just good at magic.”

“You _are_ good at it,” I assured him. Still trying to shed the aloof, glacial authority I’d unintentionally donned like an ugly shirt, I laid a hand on his. “But that lightning storm was something else.” 

He sighed, and fidgeted with the card in his other hand.

“…I don’t know what happened,” he told me, his fingers squeezing mine. “I really don’t. It was like… I could feel the magic inside me, rising up from here—” he gestured to his core, “until it was like I was so full I couldn’t hold it in.” He put the card on the table, removed his hand from mine, and studied both in his lap with a saddened interest, as though they were wholly responsible for the fire bath that the Marauders took that night. “Then… it was like a voice spoke to me, without words, and in a way that I could hear it but not hear it, and still understand it.”

“What did it tell you?” I asked, familiar enough with magic to know that from time to time, in periods of intense duress, mystical energy can manifest like a demonic presence—gaining a sentience and power all its own, latent and untapped until the magic-user voluntarily gives it total dominion over his or her skills. All magic requires an element of sacrifice, be it consensual or forced—in Zatanna’s case, she lost her father, in Zatara’s, Zatanna’s mother. Only _dark_ magi have been known to willingly sacrifice themselves to their power—in Magic-Land the ultimate sacrifice, and by far the most dangerous, for reasons I doubt I need to go over. I sat, spring-loaded, my heart in my ears. It was sounding chillingly like this was what happened—and Conner was too young and untrained to understand what he had done. 

“It said to… ‘let it in,’” he murmured. “Like a voice, saying ‘let me in.’”

I leaned toward him, ignoring the game now. 

“What happened then?” I queried gently.

“…It was as though it _did_ come in. Like I could feel it fill me up. And then I just kind of… would try things, but the magic would take over. Like… I thought about driving the men back with fire, so I spoke the spell for it, but the magic _took_ the fire and attacked them with it. Like… like it knew what I wanted more than I did.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Dad, did you love Batgirl?” he asked suddenly.

I drew up short.

“What?” I asked.

“You did, didn’t you?” said Conner. “She was your girlfriend before she died. Before the Marauders killed her. Grandpa _and_ Mom told me about her.”

I tried to smile. “Traitors,” I muttered. “But yes, kiddo, I did. Very much.”

“But… That guy. The one you took into the woods. He was the one who hurt her, wasn’t he?”

I frowned at him, silent, and nodded.

“Dad… I’m _really_ sorry for everything I said, and did, after,” Conner mumbled. “Because… I know why you wanted to hurt him so bad.”

When he paused, I didn’t speak a word, waiting for him to continue. 

“…I know, because… I wanted to hurt those men. For hurting you,” he said miserably. “I… didn’t _mean_ to hurt them, but the magic knew I wanted to. And it did what I _really_ wanted. Not what I ordered it to. Like… Kind of like Schmendrick in _The Last Unicorn._ Do you remember that? From when I read that and then we watched the movie?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I remember. ‘Magic, magic, do as you will.’”

“Yeah. Only… it was a lot worse than what happened with Schmendrick. Like I didn’t just invoke it. I wanted to hurt the Marauders, but… I didn’t _mean_ to. I just wanted to drive them back. But…”

He sighed unhappily, and stared at the surface of the table. 

“You couldn’t control it,” I finished for him.

He nodded. “Yeah.” He paused, and swiped at his nose. “It was like I tried to aim a spark, and wound up with an explosion.”

I was silent for a while, thinking on this, wondering what it spelled for my son. I have no mystical abilities—I don’t even have a meta gene. I’m about as vanilla as it gets minus my peak human propensity for gymnastics (and math.) I understand the fundamentals of magic, sure, but I’ve got a snowball’s chance in Hell of even hoping to provide Conner the most basic guidelines regarding his abilities. The ultimate blind leading the blind—only in this case, I’d be the proverbial deaf, dumb, _and_ blind guy leading someone who merely couldn’t see. 

“Well,” I told him, feeling as hopeless as I inadvertently sounded, “when we get to where we’re going, Kaldur and Queen Mera can help you.”

“…But Artemis and Kaldur haven’t gotten here yet,” Conner said quietly, his words slow, hesitant.

Again, I was silent, and finally, spun the dial. 

“They’ll get here,” I assured him halfheartedly. 

Conner eyed me, his expression all at once doubtful, reluctant, disheartened. It painfully mirrored my own glaring lack of belief in my assurance.

“…Okay,” he said. 

We continued with our game, no longer conversing outside of game-related subjects. 

Lying in the bath now, I pass a wet hand over my tired face, and try not to be overcome with visions of my son consumed by his own power—eaten alive within the flames of his own creation, or unwillingly treading the doomed pathways of Klarion, of Wotan, of Faust, dragged at the wrist by his own rogue power. That latter would kill Conner, with his empathetic nature and soft heart. While in the wilderness and on the road, he continually asked if we should leave food or blankets outside of the homeless camps we occasionally happened upon, repeatedly asked to acquire stray cats or dogs we encountered, begged to protect civilians from enforcers if we witnessed any brutality during our travels. 

“Dad, come on,” he said, more times than I could count, “isn’t it what Leaguers are supposed to do?”

And each time, my heart growing increasingly burdened and my soul blacker with smirches of ugly guilt, I had to refuse his requests, on the explanation that if we were to make it, we had to look out for ourselves, and ourselves only. The time for generosity was in the past and in the future—and had no place in the present. It _was_ what Leaguers would do—but not when staying alive in a world brutally cruel to them no longer afforded munificence. I know damn well that the only reason Conner, in a rare show of survivalist pragmatism, cut the tether when I went into the river was that I told him to—and in his eyes, I was, at that time, second only to his mother and God. If anyone else had told him to cut the line, he’d have gone into the river—and died—with me first. 

He needs Kaldur. Mera. Those who can instruct him, protect him—and others—from his own newly unleashed power.

I can’t guard him from this. I can’t even guide him.

And to be honest, I’m not even sure I can be someone my son _believes_ in anymore. I know that once, in Conner’s mind, I was a titan, an unstoppable force, a truly powerful match for even the direst of enemies, and the greatest moral pantheon the earth ever bore onto its surface. Surely there was no problem that his father couldn’t solve, no enemy that his father couldn’t vanquish, no question that his almighty dad lacked an answer to. How the mighty have fallen, I think, and bite back the bitter bulge of self-loathing and pulverizing disappointment that rises all at once at my throat. Not only did I slide on my ass down the side of the great figurative Mountain of Morality, hitting every rock and branch and bump on the way, to land spectacularly on my face in the muck at the very bottom—I managed immediately after to get knocked right back down and overpowered with an almost comical ease by the very people from whom I promised to protect my son. All the while, he watched, he witnessed, he saw—and had to take it upon himself to defend the failed hero that was supposed to be his ultimate protector. What a monumental let-down. An anticlimax. A disillusionment.

I sink back under the water, soaking up the silence, the peace, the unfeeling, hiding from the outside, drowning out the endless cacophony that bellows between my ears, incessant, never allowing me a moment of rest. Once in a while, I come up for air, slipping back down when satisfied, until the water goes luke and I start to shiver in the cold that permeates the old farmhouse.

I drag myself reluctantly out of the tub, and slowly get dressed, out of breath and direly fatigued by the time I’ve finished the process. I head downstairs, leaning carefully on the makeshift crutch that Juan fashioned for me, attuned to each step, superfluously grateful for my acrobat’s balance—adjusting my center to accommodate one leg hasn’t taken long. The weighty, sinking knowledge that I won’t be turning cartwheels or walkovers, sprinting, gliding across a flashing stadium with my knees comfortably locked around the bar of a trapeze, or working on the rings or balance beam any time in the near future—or likely _ever_ —sits cumbersomely on my shoulders, a globe far heavier even than the world, transforming me into some sorrowful, broken version of Atlas. I head into the den, seeking companionship to dispel the neverending noise inside my brain. 

In the den, Molly sits with Conner by the fire, where she plucks at an acoustic guitar, as Conner imitates her on an unplugged electric. Wolf sprawls across the hearth, his head on his paws, watching serenely with his solemn, golden stare.

This might actually pass for a Norman Rockwell painting,I think to myself humorously, taking in the scene, a sudden fondness for Molly and a deep, powerful tide of encompassing love and warmth for my son and Wolf rolling headily over me as I observe them from the entryway.

“Good,” Molly says warmly. “That’s a variant of the G chord, which is the first bar in this song…”

Conner furrows his brow, and clumsily copies her motions. Molly smiles, and so do I. Art, and now music—things my son inherited from his more creative mother and I definitely can’t lay claim to, since I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket to save my life and my version of an accomplished drawing is a stick figure. Although I’d at least get an A in Art or Music Appreciation and be a great cheerleader for creativity.

 _“Hello, darkness, my old friend…”_ she sings in a voice rich and deep, _“I’ve come to talk with you again…”_

I feel a swelling in my throat at the familiar sound of this tune, and sink into a seat, as they both give a nod in my direction, acknowledging that they now have an audience. Not speaking, I listen.

 _“Because a vision softly creeping,”_ Conner’s voice is less confident, less stable, and undulates with the lack of control inherent in the untrained, but sets off an appreciative chill across my spine, all the same, _“left its seeds while I was sleeping—”_

 _“And the vision that was planted in my brain,”_ they sing together now, _“still remains, within the sound of silence.”_

I resist a chuckle at how appropriate this choice of music is, given that I just submerged Dustin Hoffman-like in a vat of water and, refusing to make a decision regarding anything like the future, entertained something of an existential crisis, and am surprised when this chuckle mutates into a stifled sense of despair. It’s been a long time since I heard music—I mean _really_ heard it, and if I’m being honest, Simon and Garfunkel have always kind of choked me up, even as a kid. Beyond that, my dad loved them, and hearing them has always painfully reminded me of him in the years after his and my mother’s deaths.

“They have that effect on me, too, Dick,” he said once, patting my shoulder as I, eight years old, sat caterwauling, listening to them. “They’re nothing shy of perfect poetry.”

I think on my father’s words as Molly and Conner hash out the remainder of “The Sound of Silence,” feeling one verse of lyrics in particular as they enter my own teeming emotions and flesh them out, giving them shape, essence, material. 

_“Fools, said I, you do not know, silence like a cancer grows, hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you, but my words, like silent raindrops fell, and echoed in the wells of silence.”_

So much that I, and others, have to say, and with all likelihood will never breathe one word of—and even if we do give life to the roiling sea of words that crashes within us all, I’d bet all my dollars to donuts not a one of them will be lent a listening ear. We’ve spoken out already, to little effect. We’ve stood up already, to equally little effect. 

I’ve kept the fires of hope lit inside of me for years, stoking it, maintaining it, continually feeding the blaze, allowing my heart to find guidance in its light, to draw comfort from its warmth, to provide my mind a beacon toward which to strive. Now, I have to fight, and fight _hard,_ to find the small, remaining candle glow that struggles and shudders in my chest, threatening at any moment to spit, gutter, and die. I lack the strength even to breathe into it, lend it oxygen, coaxing it back into life; instead, I let it shiver in the darkness, lowering to a dim, heatless glow somewhere in the ashes of my heart, and just pray it won’t blow out. 

There hasn’t been a true resistance in some time, not even a glimmer of real rebellion against Savage’s tyranny since Zatanna, Bruce, Jason, and I went into hiding. Our fellow Hoods have gone quiet, withdrawn either into total clandestinity, inactivity, or this perdu, goddamn stronghold beneath the remains of some unnamed, ancient Atlantian fort that I feel my son and I will _never_ find. The legendary resistance has become just that—the stuff of legend, somehow mythic, an elusive beast of the deep, a new, immaterial Nessie. The once burgeoning unrest, anger, the thirst for justice—all of it has folded into an entirely silent struggle, a noiseless, complacent effort merely to survive. 

_“And the sign flashed out its warning, in the words that it was forming…”_

And here, I wonder if I’ve joined those compliant masses, as I gaze down at the tingling stump of my leg, feel the old burn in my abdomen, the twitching pain in my shoulder, the dull, muted ache in my arm, the sense of pins and needles in a limb now AWOL, the black regret that shrouds my soul like a veil. I just can’t muster up the will to really bother any longer, with my heart a massive, deadened weight like a black hole inside my chest, sucking all of my spirit into its crushing, vacuous center. It’s not that I don’t care anymore, it’s not that I pay no deference to the gravity of the situation that’s upon the world—just that I reach inside myself, and discover an empty tank where fiery resolve and immortal devotion once were.

Molly strums the final chord, and with an effort better bestowed upon Colossus, I give my son the best smile I can muster through the weight of so many of these ugly thoughts. 

“Sounds good, kiddo,” I tell him. “Your grandfather loved that song.”

“Really?” Conner asks, visibly perking up. 

I nod, leaning back in the chair.

“Do you think he’d have liked hearing me play?”

Again, I nod. “He’d have loved it.”

Conner grins, and goes through a few different chords, practicing them, with Molly’s help. They’ve moved onto different tunes now, more lighthearted ones, ones I don’t know, some folk songs, I think. The cadence is gentle, calming, a balm to wounds unseen; Molly’s deep, gorgeous voice somehow gives me a strange, unbidden sense that maybe—just maybe—things _might_ be okay. Someday. Maybe. 

I inhale, exhale, listen; taking in the sounds as though they’re the sunlight I’ve not seen in so many years, now mollified, comforted. The intonations of my son’s voice mix with those of Molly’s, and I close my eyes a while, mercifully cast adrift on the quiet, rarely found abyss of sleep.

******* 

“Dad?”

“Hmm?”

We’re sitting on the porch, with a fire going in the chiminea, Conner with a cup of hot chocolate, and I with a cup of coffee. I’ve lost track of how long we’ve been at this farm with Juan and Molly. Long enough that I’ve grown passably comfortable in this rhythm of complacent recovery, detached, somewhat, from the world around us, floating in this quiet, alternate dimension of recovery, of routine, of exile, of nonexistence. Up, exercise, physical therapy, Conner, chores, unwind, bed. All the while, growing accustomed to life with only one leg, a crutch in its place. I still catch myself taking for granted that my limb is still there, continually feeling it aching, tingling, itching. But slowly, on a painful day by day basis, I'm coming to terms with the fact that it'll forever be MIA, that this is my body, my life now. As always, I just have to adjust and adapt, "endure and survive." The nightmares still come, the sense that I’m stalked each moment by a scarcely hidden monster still plagues my every step, the atomizing knowledge that I’m inherently altered on some fundamental level continues to haunt my thoughts, the desperate, wrenching worry for Artemis and Kaldur eats at my mind, but there’s a safety about this farmhouse, a removal that protects me from the worst of these. 

The property on which the farmhouse rests likely was beautiful once, evidenced by the tumbling graveyards of trees and intermittent patches of decomposed foliage, the snowy, rolling hills, sprawling fields, and half-frozen, questing streams. I look out on it now from the porch, nursing the coffee with my good hand, squeezing my left around a resistance gripper, exercising my healing arm. The bones have set and seem to have fused, faster than expected, thanks to Conner’s intervention. The only sound is the ever-present wind, moaning over the knolls, the restful dribbling of the streams that lace the farm, and the periodic _thump_ of logs splitting and Juan’s off-key singing as he chops firewood a ways off in the yard. 

“…Why is it so hard to do the right thing?” Conner asks, watching the steam rise from his mug. 

I look over at him, caught off guard by this abrupt quandary. 

“What do you mean?” I inquire.

He sighs, and shakes his head. “I don’t know. Just… why is the right thing always so hard?”

Another pause. “…What brought this up?”

He shrugs. “I was just kind of wondering.”

I think for a moment, and then say, “Well, I guess it depends on what the right thing is at a given time.”

He frowns, and picks at a hole in his borrowed jeans.

“…How do you know what’s right?” he asks.

I shift my gaze from him, and study the grain of the wood of the porch. A realization creeps up on me, one that settles into my gut like a brick.

I can’t lie to my son anymore. I can’t pretend. I can’t assume a guise, however much it might comfort him, however much it might bolster his spirits. The fact is, I’ve been had. Outed. He’ll know I’m lying, no matter how I spin my own failures, mask my own uncertainties—even if he wants to believe that I’m not, that I’m still the father he idolized and exalted above all others. Beating Demetrius into an unrecognizable, pulpy blob and getting efficiently flattened by the Marauders has forcibly stripped away all of my previously pretty facades, revealing the repulsive true self beneath.

 _God,_ I wish Zatanna was here. 

Bruce. 

Alfred. 

Jason, even. 

For the love of God, my own parents.

 _Anyone_ but me, damn it, to answer this burning, terrible question of his. All of my deficiencies stand out in glaring relief against the murk of my dwindling virtues. 

“…I don’t know, Conner,” I admit heavily. “I really don’t have the answer there. Not anymore.”

Conner sighs, and scuffs his shoe against the porch. 

“Me, either,” he tells me. 

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” I murmur, uncertain if I _should_ apologize, but knowing damn well that my position as an authority figure has already been traumatically undermined.

He fidgets with his hot chocolate. “…Maybe Mom would have known.”

I don’t reply, staring out at the yard, the image going blurry as I fail to blink. There’s a tired urge to tear up, but the weeping doesn’t come—as it hasn’t since I sobbed on the bathroom floor, at this point I don’t even know how long ago. Weeks. Months. On some level, I guess I’m grateful, given that at least that’s one less display of weakness for my son to see me bow beneath. 

“I wish she was here,” Conner murmurs, his eyes trained on the ground.

I sigh, and pass a hand over my face, and grind my fingers into the growth of beard I’ve decided to keep. Well, that clinches it, I think miserably. I’ve officially flunked out of Fatherhood 101. I lay my head on my hand.

“Me, too, kiddo,” I say, and again, breathe a sigh. While I might have once been grateful that Zatanna wasn’t subjected to the encounter with the Marauders—like my son, I _do_ wish to God that she was here now. “Oh, me, too.”

“Dick?”

I look over in the direction of Juan’s voice. 

“I could use your thoughts on something,” he calls, and gestures me over. 

I pat my son’s shoulder, and, jamming the crutch into my armpit, I make my way over to him, careful in the snow. 

“I’ve got a bit of an idea for the barn,” he says, and I follow him as he enters the rickety old structure. 

“What is it?” I ask. 

“Well, you see how I have the loft blocked off,” he tells me, gesturing toward his handiwork. It looks like nothing more than a commonplace ceiling, the trapdoor cleverly camouflaged within the lines of the wood, entirely undetectable. One slot, equally well hidden at the corner over the cow’s stall, is where Juan sat with his shotgun aimed at my head when I was in this same barn, looting it for all it was worth. “You weren’t even able to tell it was there, were you?”

I shake my head. “No, I didn’t have a clue.” 

“Well,” says Juan, “I was considering building a kind of shelter up there. So if the Marauders ever show up here, looking for you or looking for supplies or whatever else it is they look for, we’ll have somewhere to hide.”

I nod. “Very Anne Frank.”

He smiles. “It should work. There’s enough space up there and it’s sealed off real well.”

“Providing we can get to it before they get to us,” I point out. 

“Well, naturally,” Juan says with a smile.

“So… how would you plan for that?” I ask.

“Well,” says Juan, “you’ve mentioned your son can put up magic veils, right?”

I fret on that inwardly before I give him a hesitant nod. “I’m not sure if his magic is something we can bank on anymore, though.”

“Why’s that?”

I shake my head. “There’s just… There are a lot of complications, regarding his mystic abilities. And… I can’t really say I’m equipped to help him deal with them. But… I guess it’s worth a shot if it comes down to it.”

Juan rubs at his chin. “Well. If they get to us first… I guess that’s kind of what my little mini-arsenal is for.”

“Mini-arsenal?”

His lip quirks up in a humorless half-smile. 

“…Come with me, son,” he says quietly, with a conspiratorial look and inclination of the head. 

I do, and he leads me to the back of the barn. There’s a sturdy, metal bench there built into the wall, one that apparently double-functions as a storage case. It’s so heavily sealed down that the overkill locks would be better bestowed on a box containing a dybbuk or the Necronomicon. When Juan undoes the series of locks and yanks the top open, I wonder at how my jaw remains attached to my face.

“Well, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” I say, looking at the plethora of weaponry available within its confines. 

There is an array of handguns—varying models and calibers, a pile of rifles, two sawed-off shotguns, longbows with packed quivers, upwards of a dozen military grade knives, even one automatic weapon. The amount of ammunition would arm the United States Marine Core for a month at least. It’s all fastidiously organized, everything compartmentalized and easily accessed, the weapons packed in with their respective ammo. I goggle in impressed silence.

“There’s more in the house,” he tells me, and shakes his head. “After Javier, I’m not taking any chances with those pieces of shit, ever again.”

I remain silent a moment longer, drinking in the sight of all of that firepower, humbled, emboldened, comforted, and terrified all at once. 

“I can see that,” I say finally. “Where’d you get all this?”

“The black markets in town,” he replies. 

“…You thinking about starting a resistance on your own or something?” I ask, half a joke in my voice.

Juan gives me a dark look. 

“Dick, believe me when I tell you. You can tolerate a lot of blows to your own person, you know? Like when I was in A-Stan, I took a lot of hits. Some gunshots, some charley. Messed my arm up real good—I still can’t comfortably rotate it the whole way and it screwed my plans to go into law enforcement after I retired from the army. That’s all fine, but when your enemy, whoever the hell it is, takes out a buddy of yours, a partner, it gets pretty real from that point. But when they take out a child—” He sighs. “You see the world a little differently.”

I’m quiet a moment, ruminating on this, knowing it all too horribly well to be true. 

“I can understand that,” I tell him. 

He looks over at me. “Pray you never have to understand it in the way that Molly and I do, son.” 

I meet his gaze, and then look back down at Juan’s imposing armory. 

“…I do every day,” I tell him. 

Juan locks the bench back down.

“Well,” he says. “We’ll talk about it a little more over some dinner, how’s that? Get some plans for it hashed out?”

I nod. “All right.”

We head back to the house through the slushy snow and light, drizzling patter of rain. I’m especially careful on the crutch, which threatens to sink into the soft, wet, only partially frozen ground.

Upon reaching the porch, Juan holds out his arm—even as I draw up short, my breath fenced within my chest, my heart slamming to a halt against my ribs. 

_“Dios mio,”_ he issues in a sharp, cutting breath, his arm pressing flat across my chest, holding me in place. “Oh, God…”

The front door hangs halfway off of its hinges, dangling forlornly from its frame, silhouetted against the weak, amber lamplight from inside. The mug my son held only moments before is shattered against the damp, splintery planks of the porch, its contents slowly meandering over the wooden surface, seeping into the partially rotten grains. The chair is on its side, one leg snapped off, the outline of the old rocker eerie in the dim illumination from the chiminea. 

With a deftness that on a detached level astonishes me, I shoulder Juan aside and bolt up the steps on my crutch and with my one leg, Juan hot on my heels, his protests lost on my ears, as I burst into the house. I freeze in place, as though I play a ludicrous game of Musical Statues. 

“Well, look who it is,” Chiron murmurs in a growling, silky tone, my son locked in a half-Nelson in his burly arm, a knife pressed against his small throat, a gag splitting his mouth. 

A roar starts inside my ears as I observe, in a blinking series of flash-images, Molly gripped in the hold of the Marauder I recognize as Iago with a gun pushed hard against her temple, Wolf netted and pinned beneath a thick, black blanket, uselessly struggling against Roderigo and Julius, the guttering fire in the hearth hidden by the forms of Marauders I recall but as yet remain nameless. 

The crutch pushes sharply into my armpit, a sweat breaks out across my back, as Chiron lazily grins. 

“Hi, Prom Queen,” he says. “Miss me?”


	19. Vengeance in My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hullo! ^_^
> 
> I REALLY hope this one turned out okay. It was a little hard keeping it organized, believable, and satisfying. So much going on! XD
> 
> ENJOY!
> 
> ~EF <3

“Still alive,” Chiron snorts. “What are you, a fucking cat?”

Every cell in my body goes live, the crutch pressing sharply into my armpit, threatening the circulation to my arm, the blood bombing in my head and smearing my vision. Chiron’s burly form with its harmless, sweet, handsome face wavers in and out of focus in time with my booming pulse. The image of Conner, gagged and locked tight within his grip, is all I see with any unshaken clarity. Disconnectedly, I feel my weight leaning into the crutch, pressing it into the braided throw rug atop the wooden floor. 

“Whatever, you’ve exhausted your nine thousand lives at this point,” Chiron mutters, and when one of the Marauders by the fireplace lifts his weapon, I dive.

I don’t move in any particular direction, just lob the crutch and launch into a series of somersaults that go over smoothly enough in spite of my being down a leg (thankfully, I've been practicing), and wind up on the opposite side of the kitchen table. I flip it over to shield myself from the salvo of gunfire that makes kindling out of the woodwork in the house. Molly’s screams, Conner’s muffled cries, and Wolf’s strangled howling drown out the deafening stridency of the firearms all going off and destroying the molding and furniture; even through the overpowering noise, they are only things I hear. 

There are knives in the carving block—a decent chef’s blade, a meat cleaver, all of which kept sharp. If I can survive this volley of bullets, I may be able to nab one of the blades and pull something of a Hit Girl on my adversaries. As it stands now, though, it’s a feeble defense—and honestly, a bit ludicrous. Still, I can’t just hang out behind the rapidly disintegrating bastion of a wooden kitchen table and pray the Marauders will magically go poof and disappear if I just _will_ it hard enough. I need a weapon—a _good_ one, however makeshift and absurd, that might get me out of _this_ pretty little pickle and buy me enough time to locate the weapons stock in the house that Juan had mentioned.

_Where would he keep it—where would he keep it—where is it—how can I stall them long enough to find it—_

I don’t get to deliberate over what I might repurpose into something to defend my loved ones with until I can turn up Juan’s stores, since one of the Marauders comes peeping over the edge of the table like Isayama’s Colossal Titan _(on that day, Sams received a grim reminder…),_ the mouth of his shotgun gaping right at my face. 

I shove the table in his direction and twist away, hurling my weight into another series of somersaults that lands me in the hall connecting the kitchen to the sunroom. The shot meant for my head blasts a tremendous hole in the crown molding that lines the ceiling as the force of the table throws the man off balance. I knock the end table and standing lamp down behind me, obstructing that path, buying myself a little more time. A doorway opens into the living room to my right—where I know Marauders are stationed by the fireplace. When more guns go off to craft tinder of the coffee table and rocking chair, I scramble frantically in the ruckus, grateful for the shadows of the hallway and the dark clothing I wear, to make a break for the sunroom, where I can regroup—provided I’m not witnessed. I move low to the ground as I dash past the open doorway, the gunfire way too close for comfort, dazzling, earsplitting, a devastating force that wreaks overwhelming havoc on the once inviting house with the indiscriminate fury of a natural disaster. I wind up stooped down, wedged into a lightless crack behind the bamboo, cushioned sofa in the sunroom, still casting about for something I can fight with, as of now miraculously undetected. My heart grinds to a startled halt, my senses entirely bewildered, when the gunfire all at once stops at a sharply issued bark from Chiron. 

I dare a glance into the hall, scarcely allowing even a centimeter of my face to peer around the corner of the threshold, and see the Marauder with the shotgun, deterred by the furniture barricade, retreat away into the dining nook—out of sight of the corridor. I whisper my way back out into the hall, and, my back pressed to the wall, my body melding into the darkness of the windowless alcove, I chance another peek into the living room and entryway to the house. 

Chiron holds no gun, and still clutches Conner’s struggling form with the bowie knife to his small throat. I don’t breathe, my breath fenced in my chest, every muscle a taught, nervous plank. 

“Oh, Prom Queeeeeen…” I hear Chiron lilt into the abrupt silence. 

“He mighta run out, Chiron,” speaks a voice from out of my field of vision, likely Shotgun Guy’s. “There’s a sunroom past the hallway. Opens up into the back.”

“Why the hell didn’t you check out the sunroom?” Chiron demands. 

“He made a mess of the hall, piled up furniture and shit.”

“God, Claudius, you lazy fucktard.” Chiron issues an aggravated sound. “No way his ass ran out. Not with his kid here. This guy’s not the type.”

“How do _you_ know?” 

“Leaguers are all the same, just trust me. So fucking predictable. He’s probably squatting in the sunroom as we speak.”

There’s a pause, possibly as Shotgun Guy, Claudius apparently, murmurs his assent.

“All right, Prom Queen,” Chiron says, raising his voice over the stifled sounds of my son’s bawling protests, Molly’s ragged, terrified gasping, and Wolf’s muted cries. “You want to come out and say your piece before we blast you to bits, by all means. Come on out and beg and get it over with.”

I _don’t_ come out, maintaining my silence, wondering if I can make my way to the fireplace and use the flames—burning with oblivious cheer—to my advantage in some way. Footsteps creak through the house, coming ominously closer to my suddenly piss-poor hiding spot. I can’t retreat to the sunroom for painfully obvious reasons. I think about Juan, my Hail Mary, my deus ex machina. I have no idea what happened to him, or where he is—I just pray he wasn’t cut down at the door in the initial spray of bullets.

Molly’s voice suddenly cuts into the silence, unsteady, but deep and authoritative.

“Let the boy go,” she breathes into the room. “For Christ’s sake, just let him go. He’s a _child—”_

“He’s a child,” Chiron mimics her in sing-song voice. “Jesus, lady, you think I give a shit? This _child_ is the reason half my men are back at headquarters looking like Freddy fucking Krueger.”

“He’s a _kid,”_ Molly persists. “He’s got abilities he doesn’t fully understand and can’t control. You think a ten-year-old kid means to do something like that? Please—he’s the only innocent in this room—let him go—” 

“Savage wants him,” Chiron says. “Light business. Shut your fucking mouth before I put a round through it.” He heaves an annoyed grunt. “ _God._ Stupid bitch. Women talk too much. Have to keep her around as leverage, though…”

I stake out the living room, looking for something that might work as a weapon. If I can manage to buy my way to the fireplace, I might make use of a poker, red-hot from the flames.

Still, that will buy moments at best, a nanosecond at worst, and certainly not my son’s freedom, nor a rescue for Molly and Wolf. 

But it’s better than doing nothing at all. Molly’s still yattering at the Marauders, with enough randomness in her source material that I start thinking she’s doing it out of every intention of drawing their notice away from Conner and me. I breathe an inward thanks for her enormous courage, and inch into the living room, barely skirting the sight of Claudius with the big shotgun dangling at his waist like an enormous, lopsided cock as he reenters the far end of the hallway beyond my haphazard vanguard of upturned furniture. With the Marauders’ attention now fully on madly babbling Molly, I battle-crawl my way toward the fireplace, squeezing into the tiny nook between the bowed back of the leather sofa and wall like a cat nosing into a tube sock.

En excruciatingly slow, cramped, painstaking route, I catch a glimpse of the window partially obscured by the bookshelves, barely ahead of me, set into the wall to my left, as I squish my face into a spot where I can assess the room from my ridiculous hidey-hole. Just beyond the window is the fireplace and mantle—so close. I don’t know what’s drawn my attention to it all of a sudden, but I eye the casement a moment more, on edge, awaiting something I can’t lay a finger on. My heart thunders in anticipation, and again, I see it—a fluttering of motion, so brief that I’m not even sure it was there. 

With my heart thumping at the back of my teeth, I can’t determine if it’s another Marauder, patrolling the outside of the house, a Hound they may have acquired after losing both of the beasts that formerly traveled with them, or—and I can only pray—it’s Juan, using the window to peer inside. I hold still, anticipating an influx of Marauders from outside to come worming through the window, having caught sight of me as I scuttled like a panicked crab across the floor of the living room to squeeze myself into my hiding place here, but when nothing happens for a series of short, puffing breaths, I reposition myself, twisting worm-like around on the tiny patch of dusty flooring, careful not to elicit a sound from my sluggish, steady progress, until I’m in something of a hampered, one-legged parody of a crouch. 

There’s an abrupt shout, more of a coughing yelp, and I shift my glance around the arm of the sofa, hashing an effort at discovering what’s happening beyond this protective barrier. 

Chiron twists and hunches down around his midsection, the knife dislodged from his fingers and skittering across the wooden floor, as Conner, inexplicably free, makes a lunge in the direction of the front door. He skates around Julius, who springs away from Wolf and Roderigo to grasp at him with flailing limbs, but crashes abruptly into the towering, broad-shouldered form of Iago, who has since thrust Molly into the grasp of one of his comrades. Conner spins away from him, attempting an ungainly lurch toward the door, only to be snatched up off of his feet. Iago strangulates his massive arms around him, quelling his movements. My gut volcanoes into a magma-hot rage, my teeth grating almost to cracking.

“Jesus—fucking kid just—knocked me in the goddamn nuts—” Chiron wheezes, scrunched around his groin. I _would_ chuckle nastily—if my son weren’t in so precarious a position. I carefully press one shoulder to the corner of the sofa, gradually widening my escape hatch without drawing attention, all the while looking toward the fire, the Marauders, scoping the room, seeking an opportunity to enter the affray. 

“Where’s your daddy now, kid,” Iago hisses, taunting, mean. I’d _love_ to answer that for him, ASAP. I nudge the couch again. Almost there. 

“Where _is_ the damn Prom Queen,” Chiron grumbles, still hunched, still irritable, still clearly uncomfortable. Good. “Claudius? Did you hit him?”

“I have no idea where the hell he got off to, so maybe—”

“You’re dumber than a goddamn doornail, you know that?” Chiron says, waving an angry arm. 

“Come on, Chiron, he probably _did_ get hit,” Claudius protests, gesturing at the wreckage of the furniture. “I mean, we fired off enough rounds to make a slaughterhouse of this place.”

“Yeah, well, did you find a body?”

“…I didn’t look all that hard. I just want to pull the stupid kid and get out of this goddamn place.”

“That’s fair,” Chiron mutters grudgingly, still favoring his stance. “I’m sick of this shithole.”

“So… what _are_ we doing with the kid?” Iago asks. “Just take him back to headquarters or…”

“…Or what, Iago?” Chiron queries impatiently after a moment of terrible quiet. 

“Well, I dunno, you wanna play with him or something?”

“Play with him?”

“Well, we’ve had the Prom Queen already,” Iago says, speaking as though he feels his boss has suddenly gone profusely stupid and needs to be walked through the matter at hand, “so… why not try out little magical Fairy Princess here?”

Chiron huffs. “Kids aren’t really my thing, but knock yourself out. Might want to cut his tongue out, first, or you’re in for it if he slips that gag.”

“Oh, my pleasure,” Iago murmurs, an ugly grin breaking out across his craggy, aging face as Conner doubles his maddened, terrified efforts to escape the man’s grasp.

My heart bulges somewhere in the vicinity of my tonsils, hammering there so violently and rapidly that I can’t detect its report outside of a powerful vibrating, my chest roars with a blistering fire. My stomach whirls like a tornado’s just been kicked up inside it. My muscles go spring-loaded, taking on a startling sentience, moving all by their own devices even as my own mind goes entirely blank with a blazing, unbridled fury, following the mental shout of a single word—

_NO—_

_—_ that echoes deafeningly through my brain. In my crouched position, I rise to the ball of my one foot, taking no notice of the fact that I’m missing a critical appendage, balancing and finding unparalleled brute strength and dexterity through adrenaline and desperation alone. As Iago unceremoniously shoves Conner to the wooden floor, his face split in a pitiless, leering smile, and yanks his own bowie knife from his boot to kneel down over my son’s all-at-once overwhelmingly small, powerless, belly-down form, I spring from the shadows behind the sofa like a raging tiger, attuned only to the sound of the boy’s panicked whimpering through the gag that stifles his mouth. 

I’m not entirely certain how I make it over there, and so quickly, with only one leg and no crutch, and on some detached level I’m aware I’ve got to look downright comical and not especially among the ranks of the grandiose heroic zooming over the living room floor at a crazed hop-sprint, but I barrel with all of my weight and strength, a clumsy avenging angel, into the larger form of Iago. He’s off-center already, kneeling down as he is, and his body plows hard into the wall beyond as he expels a startled _“Ooomph.”_ Conner scrambles away, moving frantically on his hands and knees, making his way toward the same sofa I hid behind scant moments ago.Before Iago, struggling on his side beneath me, can right himself, I grab him, twisting our forms to place him between his companions and me, catching hold of his neck in a vice-tight headlock. His legs pump wildly up and down against the flooring, his boots squeaking like frightened mice, his hands clawing at my arm, as I yank back _hard_ on his throat, cutting off his breath. Every weapon in the room is at once trained on me, the sounds of shouting bouncing off the walls of the room, each Marauder shifting and shuffling to get a better angle on me through their fallen comrade. In their moment of lapse, Wolf twists and writhes free of his captors, tearing through the blanket to emerge like a white demon from the black mouth of Hell. 

Startled shouting erupts throughout the room as Wolf tears into the nearest Marauder in a grisly, nightmarish snapping of tissue and bone and ear-piercing, wild animal screams. Unthinking, moving on instinct, using the commotion to my immediate advantage, I squeeze my arm tighter over Iago’s neck, grasp his greasy crown with my free hand, and with every ounce of muscle I have, I give one swift, almighty jerk. I feel the deep, abrupt _pop_ under my arm, and just like that, his body goes completely limp—flaccid, floppy, deathly still and heavy in my hold. I swipe the bowie knife from his lax fingers as his form slumps, and haul up on one leg, wrenching his sagging body up with me. There’s a pause, laden with shock, the only sounds that of Wolf’s guttural growling and the whimpers of his victim that he holds by the back of the neck, shielded by the body. As the guns, once again, start up, I follow suit and shelter behind Iago’s drooping form, feeling _thunks_ here and there that don’t penetrate, thanks to the armoring built into the Marauders’ uniform that he wears. The spewing of bullets tapers somewhat as some of the men pause to reload, and I use the opportunity to thrust Iago’s body into the crowd. 

Molly has since been let free, likely by accident, and I witness her scuttling, unnoticed by the others, over to the sofa just out of reach of the scuffle, from the corner of my eye. Her hands are bound, but she moves with surprising speed. A Marauder catches sight of her, and leaps to grab her before she can reach the couch, and once he hurls her away into the wall, where she lands in a pile of motionless, unconscious limbs, he yanks Conner out from where he hides, and holds him fast as he struggles, not strong enough in his boyhood to push him away. 

In the span of less than a breath, a textbook of thoughts crashes into my brain, downloaded in complete entirety with a shocking immediacy, not bothering with a gradual influx, just a big bucket of thought chucked violently into my mind and spontaneously processed.

I’ve finally, _finally_ killed a man. I’ve taken a life. But unlike in all the novels I’ve read, and films I’ve watched, that fact means little to me beyond mitigating a titanic threat to my son, and to the kind owners of this farm who have granted us desperately needed asylum. The greater knowledge that clangs with the most unrelenting clarity is that I can’t, and _won’t_ , show mercy—not here, not now, and all too likely never again. Mercy, even if it was mercy born of regret and a desire to atone and reclaim the virtuous, empathetic compassion I once demonstrated, stayed my hand the last time I crossed paths with these subhuman monsters—and that mercy left me raped, tormented, and left to die in a pool of my own blood, all in front of my child. Mercy here, and now, will spell _worse_ for my son. And if I let even _one_ of these bastards go, they’ll just come back, looking for him, and likely with greater numbers next time. 

That old question, that plagued me so doggedly throughout the years— _will I hesitate—_

No. And my former sense of despair and complacency is gone, just _presto!_ And vanish.

Now is a time to storm. 

As Roderigo rocks backward, shoved off balance by Iago’s weight as it rams into him like a bull, I murmur into the stunned, thunderously silent pause, “If one good deed in all my life I did— _I do repent it from my very soul,”_ and, the words from their former leader’s beloved _Titus Andronicus_ still echoing throughout the demolished living room, with abandon, I lunge into the fray, working my way toward my son.

Still using the momentum from hurling the body at my adversaries, I dive forward, rocked to my side as a round I don’t feel scrapes my arm and another thwacks its way into my side, and snatch up one of the unnamed Marauders, snaking his body around until his back is pressed against my front. With one arm clasped over his chest, squeezing his arms against his torso, I borrow balance from him long enough to jab the bowie knife into his throat, right at the carotid. He gags and sputters, the blood shooting sudden and tepid over my arm, spilling onto the wooden flooring in gushing bursts. I shove him down into the syrupy, reaching puddle of red before I finally lose my own center of balance and crash to the floor, my fall mostly broken by his jerking form. I turn to my back, and see only the black barrel of a gun, gaping dispassionately at me. 

Then, there’s the shocking bark of a shot, and for a brief moment, my muscles go liquid, certain in this single heartbeat that I’ve finally died. 

Instead, the glaring eye of the barrel curves in an arc out of my field of vision, and a tremendous thud reverberates throughout the room.

Baffled, I quest wildly about, seeing only the same flicker of motion from the window—now cracked just a hair open. 

Confusion ensues and bedlam breaks out amongst the Marauders as they group closer together, heads whipping wildly about, some rounds jarringly going off in the direction of the window, peppering the flurry of startled voices. Glancing over to my side, I see this new body, a broad, burgundy hole gruesomely staring like a third eye through the center of its forehead, blood spreading stickily and illumining a reddish orange beneath his bald scalp. Roderigo. There’s another clap, and another nameless Marauder drops like a building under a wrecking ball, felled by an equally effective headshot. There’s a flurry of chaotic shouting, shots squeezed off at the window, and I’m forgotten momentarily. I right myself, the bowie knife buoyant in my hand, and lean on Wolf as he comes up beside me, his haunches rounded and hackles raised, lips pulled back over his bloody teeth. His victim lies moaning, turning in a splatter of scarlet, his arms grasping his disemboweled midsection. He’ll be dead soon enough. The rolling growl pouring from Wolf’s throat causes the hair on my body to stand on end, and the four remaining Marauders—Chiron, Julius, the nameless one clutching my son, and Claudius—retreat a few steps as Juan, moving at a swift sidestep, suddenly floats into the room through the front door, still ajar, and assumes a Weaver stance, his hands locked around the barrel of his handgun, his waist weighted down with holsters now attached to his belt, heavy with weaponry. 

My Hail Mary, my deus ex machina—here, by my side, armed and primed, his demeanor calm, rational, deadly. My heart and spirits rise, shouldering aside and stuffing the knowledge that I’ve clearly gone _way_ beyond the pale, now, entirely off the deep end, into a world of corruption with absolutely no scruple, never to return. Once again, my molecules have shifted, mutated, changed. The last time my path crossed with these men, I was sick, weak, vulnerable, assailed by inner demons, lost, wayward. Not now. The bodies scattered across the floor prove that I don’t _need_ both legs to put these animals down like the rabid, dangerous beasts they are—and put them down, I will. Every last one of them. And I won’t stop until every other gang of Marauders, every other soldier of the Light, every other grunt from enforcers to the League of Assassins, and even Savage himself—I won’t stop until this entire operation is a charred pile of ash and ruin. If it takes me a hundred years, if I have to die for it, if I have to hamstring and double-cross for it, I will see it done—starting with these piles of shit. Bolstered and steadfast, I stand beside Juan, and pull myself to my full height, bracing myself against Wolf’s great shoulders, the weight of the knife in my hand and what it represents a balm to my injuries. My heart slows, still a rapid staccato, but down-tempo from even moments ago. I know what I have to do. And I will do it. I will protect my son. I will safeguard him. And by God, I will give him a world in which he can live safely, where he’s not on the lam, in hiding, in constant fear. 

“Dick,” Juan says in a low voice, “take Shorty.”

I jam the knife into my hip pocket, aware I could shear my own skin, not caring, and draw the sawed-off shotgun, Shorty, I assume, from its holder at his side. I’d utilize both at once, but I need one hand for balance. When Claudius moves to fire, I automatically point the barrel in the general direction of his head, and squeeze the trigger. The profound kickback about sends me to my ass, the would-be fall avoided only by Wolf adjusting his stance to support my weight. The near-tumble barely censors the gore from my sight as the single blow from Shorty sends Claudius’ head into a scattered debris of carnage across the living room, the remains shortly joined by his twitching body, awakening a flash-image of both Conner’s and Roy’s ghastly deaths that blinks over my vision, a remembrance that plays itself now with a feeling of gleeful revenge and no longer the trauma it once brought. _That’s for you,_ I think vengefully, _both of you,_ tossing the thought upwards at Roy and Conner, praying they’re somewhere that they can hear it. The round Claudius managed to get off in his last second of undeserved life saws off the corner of the staircase just behind me. I hardly start, no longer startled by gunfire, merely aware of it. The tightness in my chest where I’ve been hit funnels my breath, concentrating it, keeping me calm, my focus razor-edged and needle-sharp. The burn in my arm lends itself to the fire that rages within. 

_Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, blood and revenge are hammering in my head._ I feel a smile tugging at my lips, spreading across my face, the threat of laughter at the back of my throat. 

Julius edges closer to Chiron, his trembling hands locked around his weapon. Up close to him like this, I recognize now that he may be older than I suspected, eighteen, maybe, his square jaw covered in stubble, his face girlish under its silvery locks of fine hair. Young enough to be scared shitless, but old enough to know damn well better. I suddenly don’t care that he was the only one that didn’t assault me that night. He stood by and let it happen. He did nothing. The worst evil. 

“Come on, Prom Queen, don’t be stupid,” Chiron says, his voice a hair unsteady, his eyes flickering with, to my dark satisfaction, fear. 

I level Shorty on the Marauder holding Conner. “You. Let him go.”

“Yeah, like you’re gonna fire that with your kid between us,” he scoffs, although I detect a tremble in his voice. How satisfying. Again, I fight a smile. 

“You think I need this thing?” I ask, gesturing at his fallen comrades. “Cute.”

Chiron chuckles. “You know, I heard you were a heavy-hitter. Last time we saw you, I remember thinking I was a little disappointed at how easy everything was.” He shrugs ruefully. “Guess I underestimated you.”

I don’t reply, and instead, squeeze a handful of Wolf’s fur, and lean down until I’m close to his ear. 

“Conner’s your job, buddy. I trust you,” I murmur to him, and release my hold. 

With a resounding snarl that calls to mind the terror well placed within a nightmare of monsters and hell spawn, he springs at the Marauder clutching my son. 

The man doesn’t even get a shot popped off before Wolf hurtles into both of them, knocking the Marauder off of his feet, sending Conner rolling away unharmed over the throw rug and into Claudius’ grotesque body. The boy scrambles frenziedly to his feet and rushes away toward Molly’s immobile form. Julius leaps after him, only to take a solid hit in the leg from Juan’s handgun. He falls spectacularly to the ground, his face bouncing over the wood of the floor, as Chiron charges in my direction, throwing away his own weapon, his bare hands lifting. Darkly excited, I drop Shorty—I want to do this hand-to-hand, personal, in-your-face, I want to _feel_ him fucking die—and ready myself.

I don’t know how I stay balanced, but I meet Chiron head-on, unafraid now, knowing I’m goddamn good—second only to Bruce—at grappling, as he attempts a Matador pass at me. I bend on my one knee and lunge, grab hold of his legs, and hop around his side, and then push him down in a choke from the ragged stub of my knee, just as effective as a bent leg. I’m unable to keep tabs on Conner, Wolf, Julius, or my son’s former captor in this position. That matters less, somehow, as I catch sight of Chiron’s face under me, now the one overpowered, no longer above me, dominating. My sight streaks blood red, and my mind fills now with here-centered thoughts that scream of unending, hysterical, all-consuming loathing and wrath. The desire to rearrange that nice-looking face of his flies through my muscles.

I lean my weight into my half-leg, and let my fists fly, cuffing his face until I feel the nose, the cheekbone, the orbital crunch under my knuckles, shouting the names of all of my loved ones that this bastard killed into his purpling, bleeding face, but I don’t keep the upper hand. Chiron’s legs frantically come up, clasp me about the neck and jaw, and with desperate strength, twist my body away. I come down on my side, rolling up to my seat to attempt a one-legged butterfly guard. It throws off Chiron’s balance, but missing one critical appendage, it’s not enough to keep him off of me, and, being heavier, he has me on my back after a period of breathless, panting struggle, pressing his elbow into my throat. 

_No no no no no—you’re not doing this to me again—you’re fucking not—_

I fight his grip on my neck, sparklers starting in my vision, and I feel the air blast back into my lungs with a _whoosh_ as Juan clobbers him over the head with the butt of his handgun. 

Chiron thumps to his side, rolling out of the way of the shot that Juan fires, and hauls up and tackles him to his back while Juan scrambles to reload. They tussle, the advantage flip-flopping between them, with me gawking like a moron as I frenetically gulp breaths into my bruised throat. The skirmish ends when Chiron slams the palm of his hand into Juan’s nose. I shriek something as his head snaps backward and he lands on his back, prone and motionless. 

“Goddamn you—” I hiss, and lurch toward Chiron, low to the ground. 

We wrangle, hard, struggling against each other, battling the other’s strength, breath coming and going in rapid bursts, sweat pouring and blood flitting. My arm, burning and bleeding, feels numb, dead, heavy; as though a thousand pounds of rip cord have been lanced about it just below the deltoid. What breaths I draw stunt in my neck, failing to enter my lungs, setting off a confetti of flickers that obscures my field of vision. My chest feels as though it’s been caught in a bear trap, squeezed and pierced. Still, I fight, landing strikes, taking them, blocking them, missing them. What furniture remains goes belly up, lamps crash to the floor, paintings dislodge from their hangings, dents and cracks disfigure the walls. I no longer have a thought outside of dodge, throw, parry, attack, feint, all the while fighting to stay upright, often stealing my balance from my opponent. Several times I twist, tumble, cartwheel away, moving in and out of his reach, stealing blows here and there. No words are passed, not now; each of us merely darts back and forth, sharing jabs and grappling one another into exhaustion. 

Chiron shoves me toward the fireplace, and I finally lose my center, crashing to the ground in a tangled pretzel of limbs, and find myself once again mashed under his vast weight. His hands press down on my neck, crushing my gullet, breaking off my breath. 

“Well, here we are again,” he growls, his voice pinging through my skull, battering my brain, weaving in and out. “Finish this job. You’re mine, Prom Queen. _Mine._ Fucking say it. You’re _mine.”_

I feel the spit surging from my straining mouth, gushing over my chin, mixed with the tinny, mineral taste of blood. I issue a hissing, gurgling sound, failing to articulate without breath, the strength pouring from my limbs like blood from a gash, unable to believe I’m going to die here at the hands of the one person I’m insulted just to share the earth with. 

“You’re mine. The kid’s mine. _Mine._ Fucking _mine,_ ” Chiron keeps growling, over and over, a sickening litany. I reach up, push back against him, half-panicked with the clawing, desperate need to breathe and the gross injustice staring me straight in the face. 

_If someone’s choking you, go for the fingers, you can control the entire arm by the fingers—_

Dinah’s voice, abruptly speaking into my muddling brain, lighting one last surge of adrenaline in my core. 

I grasp with slippery phalanges at Chiron’s fingers, applying myself wholly to this task, and peel at them, dislodging the pressure just enough that I can free my throat somewhat. I frenziedly suck in half a breath through his grip and the unseen clamp around my chest, and as the minor influx of oxygen brings a bit of feeling back to my muscles and combats the wild dizziness, I see the glint of metal, reflecting the rosy glow of the firelight. 

Chiron’s machete. Dangling naked from his belt, ready to be drawn in an instant. It hangs at his waist, easily within my grasp.

With one hand still wrestling with Chiron’s at my neck, I seek with my other and wrap my grip around the hilt of the machete, barely registering what Chiron is saying now—

“One way or the other we’re taking your kid back to headquarters, he’ll be awful sorry his daddy’s dead and he’s not going to cooperate, so I’m just going to cut his tongue out and do whatever I feel like with him—anything I feel like—and then I’ll kill him and throw him in the tank at one of the Death Shafts… Sure, kids aren’t normally my thing, but there’s no choice, here, no choice, I tried to make it work, I really did, you shitbag—”

I release my hold on his hand, and with the mad speed of a pit viper, swing my fist with all my might, feeling the strength burst out of me with that one motion, an H-bomb detonation born of every ounce of power I’ve got left. The blow lands across his face with more fury than I could have anticipated, even if I’d been given Kobra-venom, subjected to Project SHADE, or possessed by a demon. Chiron’s head snaps to the side, a spray of blood misting the air, a scattering of teeth skittering over the wooden floor like a handful of marbles. Stunned, his grip slackens and he shifts away from me, clasping his face, catching the flow of blood that fountains over his chin and down his neck. Fighting against the overflow of air that nearly blacks me out, I tighten my hold on the machete, and swipe it from its holster, then come up onto my one knee, balanced by the stub of my other. 

I raise the weapon over my head, a maniac, unmasked Jason Voorhees, and as I’m about to bring it down, I hear Chiron, his face all at once blanched paper-white beneath his starkly black beard and boyish curls, his voice gone from a deep, egging growl to a cracking yelp—

“No—no, _please_ —”

The blade still poised over him, I breathlessly state in a hoarse, grating bark, _“I_ fucking begged— _shitbag_.”

And with that, I bring the blade down, connecting it at the base of his neck, cleaving the muscle of his trapezius. He bellows an inhuman howl, screaming in a panicked, high-pitched, uneven modulation, as I come up over him, on my knees, my muscles twanging. 

All things around me haze into amorphous veins of color, as though I am static on a rocketing bullet train, careening too fast for anything to come into focus. Hurried shots of images blink into my sight, not remaining for long. The blade flashes yellow-silver in the firelight, streaking up, down, up, down, up, down, a blur in the dim room. The flesh of Chiron’s neck goes to ribbons, the blood swooping through the air in flapping, vermillion wings, decorating my face and torso like war paint, soaking the wooden floor and destroying the throw rug, spattering the walls and window. I strike until the screaming stops, until the neck separates, until the head with that sweet-natured, good-looking baby face totters drunkenly away from the big, burly shoulders. I strike, overwrought, blind and deaf with colossal, overpowering hatred and molten-hot, stabbing rage, shearing the chest and abdomen, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. The blade goes up one more time, until a pair of hands on my arms stays its descent.

I screech, twisting, ready to fight, until I hear Juan’s voice, penetrating the roaring scream between my ears.

“It’s okay—it’s okay—it’s me, it’s me,” he’s murmuring, forcing my arms down, slowing my motions, his voice low, gentle. The machete clatters to the floor as he continues in that same soft voice, “He’s dead, son, he’s dead, let it go…”

Next thing I know, his arms are around my shoulders, his wrinkled palm cradling my head, as though I’m the boy he lost, the son that died, returned now to him. I’m stiff and unmoving, dragging one crazed breath after another into the tight, lumpy vice that’s my chest, until the din in my ears dissipates, the red retreats from my vision, and my muscles untwine from their hard, knotted loops. 

“It’s over, son, it’s over,” Juan murmurs to me. “They’re gone. All of them. They’re gone. They’re dead. It’s all right now.” 

Even now, I can’t register that we’re safe, that it _is_ over. My heart pounds in a mad fury in my chest, unceasing, relentless. I can’t breathe, or feel my arm. I hadn't even noticed that Juan had regained consciousness, and I realize with heart-grinding terror I don’t know where my son is.

I wrest myself away from Juan, and to my transporting relief, witness Conner, sitting and weeping beside Wolf and Molly, who lies shifting her weight and groaning, rediscovering consciousness. He fights with the gag, tied so tightly I see the blood from where it’s cut into the sides of his mouth dripping over his chin and jaw. Wolf nips at it in an effort to assist. I scramble toward them, and, heedless of the blood all over my hands, arms, and front, I tear the gag from my son’s face and yank him to me in two swift motions, squeezing him hard against my chest, pressing my bloody face against his hair. He quivers, as drawn up and tense as I am, until he dissolves and goes slack in my arms.

“Dad—” he sobs into my chest, and I feel his arms cinch tight around my waist. 

We stay like this for I don’t know how long. I’m not aware of anything that transpires outside of this little knot of existence, this holding my son, feeling him breathe, hearing his voice, catching the familiar scent of his hair. I draw back only to clasp his face in my palms, say things I won’t remember later in the tsunami of relief that crashes over and drowns out everything else, overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is _alive._

Slowly, I come back to myself, sliding out of the tense, clustered, shivering skin of adrenaline and fear, and I release Conner, who sits heavily, and rubs at his face, his eyes cast down before him. It’s now that I pull myself up, and catch a glimpse of the room. 

My heart about drops out of my body, it sinks so far and so fast, when I witness the enormous damage, all the pieces of furniture shot and overturned and smashed to matchsticks and toothpicks, the gouges and scuffs over the wooden floor, the smattering of holes, pocks, and craters all across the walls. But so much more glaringly, and so much worse, the bloodbath, the carnage, the butchery—the interior of a well-crafted, detailed, expert Halloween attraction, only real, painfully real, all lit up by the merrily burning fire, crackling happily on without a care in the world, punctuating the cruel, taunting, whispering voice inside my head, murmuring, _“You did this, it was all you, Juan and Wolf only took out two or three, but you, you killed the rest, you killed them, you’re a murderer, there’s no going back now—”_

I sink heavily to my seat in the middle of the gory, nightmarish mess, and, trembling, chattering, feeling all of that righteous, vengeful, murderous resolve that welled up in me only moments ago just pouring out of me like someone’s opened a tap in my body, I bury my face in my hands, unable to keep looking at the slaughterhouse around me, sickened, full of nauseating self-loathing and all-consuming shame. I fall into tears. 

I can’t form one concrete thought, only feel the rushing tides of so many deep, murky emotions, blacker, bitterer, sourer than puffed, rotted, seeping fruit. They pull at my heart like clawed, knobby fingers, rows of undead hands dragging it into the unending nightfall of my soul. I hunch down into a tight knot, pressing my arms to my sides, warding off all of the hemic, stomach-turning sights that stretch around me like an Argento panorama. 

Juan’s voice flits in and out of my ears, Molly’s; I hear nothing, just remain locked away, everything inside me screaming, weeping, twisting, all of my internals a mass of thrashing worms crushed within my chest and belly. I’m only half-aware of Wolf nudging my arm, trying again, and then lying down at my side. 

Then, another voice, breaking into my hearing, and for the barest second, dispelling the sorrowful noise.

“Dad,” Conner says in a whisper. “It’s okay. You did good. You saved us. Don’t cry.”

I pause, quiver, start up again.

“Don’t cry,” he murmurs again, and I feel his arms wrap around my shoulders.

I lower my shaking hands from my face.

“Don’t cry, Dad.”

I rest a hand on his arm, draw one shuddering breath.

“You did good.”


	20. I Tell My Sorrows to the Stones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all!
> 
> This is the final installment. :-) I can't believe it, but it's the final--freaking--installment. *screams* :D
> 
> I am SO sorry it took so long to get this chapter hammered out... There was a lot to tie up, here, and two kids (one of which my new baby...), work, housework, and a husband working 60+ hours/week with an hour+ commute made finding time to write a bit of a challenge. I really hope it doesn't feel rushed. I did my best NOT to rush through it, for as hurried as I might have felt as I worked to finish it. :-) 
> 
> Thank you so much, everyone, for sticking this story out with me. :-) I hope you enjoy this last chapter, and the whole product. :-) 
> 
> Odds are... There will be a continuation. Eventually. Stay tuned. ;-) 
> 
> Much, much, much, much love, and endless gratitude. :-)
> 
> Xoxoxoxoxo  
> ~EF <3 <3 <3

_Wan, tired dawn light. Hollow silence settling like a nestling bird over the house. The soft, cottony sense of snow. Occasionally, a low, sad hum of wind._

_In the gentle, reverberating peace, the gleaming pools and spatters of blood that reflect the firelight in an eerie mimeo of ritual sacrifice, the bodies scattered about like a child’s unwanted playthings. The horror of it all mocking the surrounding quiet, thumbing its nose._

_Sitting in the center of it, as much responsible for the horror as I am for the silence, unmoving, keeping entirely still, as though to remain static will render this somehow unreal, a dreamscape, an illusion._

_Lying down smack in the middle of it, all at once discovering with a sense of exhausted curiosity that I can’t breathe, that I’m fighting a massive fist that’s wrapped itself around my lungs and refuses to let go. I lie, gasping like a stranded fish, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I’m at last on my way to my overdue and very welcome death._

_“Juan!” Conner calls, panic in his voice. “Juan, something’s wrong with my dad!”_

_Hands boosting me from the floor, piling me onto the coffee table, miraculously still standing in the middle of this train wreck. My eyes filled with the sight of a headless body, sprays of blood, smatterings of brain matter and bits of skull. Unable to avert my gaze, staring stupidly, bizarrely entranced, at the raggedy maw, so like a chewed-up slab of beef, where a head ought to be, the image wrong, perverse, twisted. Not feeling a thing as Juan turns me to my side, yanks my arm over my head, and rips my shirt by the sleeve at the underarm. I feel his fingers at the gunshot wound I’d forgotten, a burn in my ribcage toward my back. Some bickering with Molly over the bullet, and then feeling a jab in my side, just below my armpit. I feel my breath hitch, and can’t stall a startled sound from my throat as I feel him jam his finger in the same spot._

_“Sorry, I know that’s not especially comfortable,” he murmurs. “Just a second more… This will help you breathe…”_

_I clench my teeth as I feel a clinch of stinging pressure, incessant, dragging on a lot longer than I think necessary, and then, at last, the sight of something other than the gruesome, headless body attracts my eye._

_A straw, nosing into a glass of water, blood stuttering through its clear plumbing and into the liquid in the glass, coloring it a deep, violet-red. Bubbles rising gaily from the mouth of the straw and rising to the surface with a faint burbling sound. Craning my neck, catching sight of a Bic pen sticking out of my side like a candle on a cake, the straw poking its way out of the pen’s tubing and reaching into the water glass._

_A makeshift chest tube._ Smart, _I think unfeelingly, watching with interest as the bubbles continue rising from the opening of the straw. My chest inflates, and with the unimpeded breath, my body relaxes against the wooden surface of the table. I notice through my blurring and refocusing vision that Juan’s face is bloody, his nose broken in more than a few places, his eyes puffed almost to closing. How the hell he regained consciousness from such a severe blow to the face—I’ll_ never _figure that one out. I almost feel like laughing at the ludicrousness of it all._

 _Conner draws the bullet from my body—holy motherfucking_ ow, _Batman_ — _by use of a few spoken words I don’t catch. Juan packs and dresses the wound, ministrations that fade with my failing wakefulness, until I drift off, away from this horror show, my senses completely exhausted._

*******

My eyes pop open, grimy and thick, my head stony and like an anvil on the pillow beneath my face. I blink, confused, and realize I’m back in Javier’s bedroom, all tucked into bed like a little sardine in its can. Confused, I rise up on my elbow, and regret the decision as a lightning bolt shoots through my side, as though my torso has become home to an angry, mini-Thor. I sink back down, and release a huff from my lungs. 

“Not again,” I mumble irritably into the pillow. I’m damn well sick of being _injured_ or _invalid_ or _recovering_ all the time. 

I roll over, and gaze up at the ceiling, still waiting for my mind to catch up with the idea of being awake, still waiting to remember how I wound up in bed. 

I feel my innards all go double-gravity and slam into my back when the horrible recollection seeps into my brain. 

“Oh, God,” I murmur, and lay a hand on my head. Part of me prays _everything_ was a dream, that none of it _happened_ , that it was all a lurid, bloodthirsty, revenge-seeking fantasy, that I’m still recuperating from the first attack and have been trapped inside the heated landscape of my own fevered imagination for all this time. But the gunshot wounds, forensic and tangible evidence, are there—the padding tacked to my ribs, the gauze wrapped around my upper arm, the screaming-banshee pain. 

Still, I can’t hang around in bed for one more second, not with my muscles crawling and scrabbling about beneath my skin, begging me to work them into a fatigue beyond feeling, a numbness, an escape from the grim, darker-than-black debasement that saturates my entire body. I swing my leg and a half from beneath the sheets, find that my crutch is propped against the nightstand, and rise with its assistance. No longer fueled by screaming desperation and an overload of adrenaline, I feel the customary disordered sense of balance as I make my way into the hall. I pause at the top of the steps, and heave a breath as I start my descent, every footfall snowballing my mounting dread. 

I stand dumbly at the bottom of the stairs when I reach the landing, watching soundlessly as Molly scrubs remnants of blood from the butter yellow of the walls. The sunroom furniture has been moved into the living room, its colors mismatched, the sizes wrong. The rug is gone, the pine flooring bald and reflecting the light from outside. The curtains have been shifted, one drape hanging over the far window, dangling over the casement at the middle, no longer joined by its fellow. I recall with startling lucidity the fronds of blood that splashed over the gingham fabric. I rub at my achy forehead, my eyes sandy and weighted.

“Oh, good,” Molly says, noticing me lurking like a creeper, “you’re up. How’re you feeling?”

“…I’m…” I fight for words, my tongue thick and confused. After an overlong pause, I manage, “I’m all right, I guess.” 

She gestures toward the kitchen. “There’s some breakfast in there, if you want some.” 

I shake my head. “…No, thanks. Where’s Conner?”

“He’s upstairs in the game room,” she replies. “Fell asleep again, reading with Wolf.”

I nod, and then just stand, vacillating, awkward, nervous. “…Can I, uh… Can I help?”

Molly shakes her head, her expression warm, a quality that only makes me more uncomfortable. “No, no, I got this. I’m almost done, anyway.”

I press my palm to my forehead, which is clammy and hot all at once. “…How long was I out for this time?”

“Couple of days,” she says. “You were in a pretty bad way when it was all over. You know you got shot, right? Twice? Not to mention pounded into ground beef.”

I blink. “…Uh… Yeah, I think I kind of remember that.” Tense, I shift my weight, leaning more heavily on the crutch. “Molly… I…”

I grasp at words, none of which are solid or cohesive, and find that I can’t meet her gaze. It’s too warm, too kind—and _far_ too understanding. 

“You don’t have to say anything, honey,” she says, going back to the task at hand, smearing the last remnants of blood beneath the soapy brush in her hand. “What’s done is done. And we’re all still here.”

I wander into the kitchen, where a folding table I remember was formerly stored in the barn stands in the center, laden with the cloth that adorned its predecessor. I take disquieting note of the evidence of bullet holes in the bottom corner of the material, barely hidden within its hanging folds. There’s a pan full of instant coffee on the stove, hot and fragrant, inviting in the chilly room. Soft light streams in through the window, white with snow. I pour a cup of coffee, and sink into a seat at the table. I sit for a long time, only half-wondering where Juan is, focusing on the fake wooden design of the tabletop, my brain too full to even begin attempting to think. 

After a while, I finish the coffee in the cup, and rise. Heading outside, I make my careful way over the snow to the barn. It’s there I find Juan, along with a familiar, godawful smell that about knocks me to my seat. 

I almost lose the coffee in my stomach when I see what he’s up to and where the smell is coming from. 

He looks up at me from the hacksaw in his hands, his mouth a grim, determined line, his face speckled with wine-red flecks. 

After a moment of absorbing the image of tied-off garbage bags and the legless, armless, headless torso on the worktable, he lays the hacksaw down, and falls to the stool behind him. Loudly, he sighs.

“…I’m so sorry you had to see this, Dick,” he tells me after a moment. His voice is dark with regret. “I was really hoping I’d have this finished before you came to.”

“…What are you doing?” I ask, unable to mask the horror in my voice.

He looks at me matter-of-factly. “Dick, there’s not really much to be done for it, here. We’ve got to dispose of them somehow, and it’s not like we can call up the Light to give them a funeral service.”

I jerk my gaze to the floor, promptly ashamed. I find a seat, and sink heavily into it, and lay my face in my hands for a few minutes. 

“…Sorry, Juan,” I tell him eventually, my voice heavy. He’s right—they _do_ need to be disposed of; otherwise, they’ll just lie here, rotting in the barn, and Juan is aging, still hurt, and hard-put to haul the two hundred plus pound bodies into the woods to dump. “God, you know, I shouldn’t say a damn thing—especially since _I’m_ the one that put them all here.”

Juan eyes me a moment, and then he unexpectedly half-smiles.

“Well,” he says. “You didn’t put them _all_ here.”

I can’t bring myself to smile back, but I at least halfheartedly lift shoulder. “No, I guess I didn’t.”

“Listen, son,” he says. “I’m almost finished. Why don’t you head back to the house? You _really_ don’t need to be dealing with this.”

I ruminate a moment, gazing at the pile of garbage bags, and then, reaching a conclusion, I shake my head. 

“I’ll help,” I state, and move to the worktable. 

Juan shakes head. “No way. You need to be in the house where it’s warm, where you can recover properly. That aside, this is _not_ going to be a walk in the park. I’ve got to get enough of a grave dug for these bodies, and dug _deep,_ and that’s going to be really tough going with this frozen ground.”

I know his unspoken thought, kept quiet out of the desire to be thoughtful and sensitive— _it will be hard even with_ two _legs._ I brush away a lock of hair that strays over my eye. I need a haircut in the worst way, I think disconnectedly—when it falls over my face like this, I can’t even see, let alone hide a bunch of bodies.

“You think I can’t help you dig because I’m down a leg,” I say, not accusingly, not nastily, just making a statement. 

He looks at me. “Well, can you?”

I look over the remains on the table, the bags piled about. 

“I can manage,” I tell him. “…They’re mostly my dead, anyway. I should be the one to do it.”

Juan nods. “Well. All right, then, son. Just let me finish this part up.”

As he finishes placing the dismal remains on the table into what’s left of the large, gleaming black garbage bags, tying them off with a somber doggedness, I stay on my bench, and don’t speak the real reason behind my insistence on helping. I know how hard it will be to navigate a shovel on one leg, in the frigid air, injured, in pain, exhausted, heartsick.

I know all of this, but I’ll still bury these men.

It’s my penance. 

*******

_The afternoon spent in the gentle peace of the periwinkle twilight beneath the reaching umbrella of trees a ways from the house, me spearing the shovel with both hands into the frozen earth, depending entirely on my weight to break up its surface, and on the shovel itself to maintain my balance, and Juan doing the same, unspeaking, merely tossing the solid dirt and snow aside to craft the mass grave. I work myself into a burning, knotting exhaustion, the muscles of my shoulders aching and stringing tightly together, my one leg seizing and numb, my back prickling with sweat in spite of the penetrating cold. Tossing the bags into the pit with grisly, hushed thumps, watching them pile into black, abyssal masses within the yawning grave. Shoveling the churned-up, snowy earth over it, filling its mouth, quieting its silent scream._

_I stand over the grave when the macabre undertaking is done, leaning on the shovel, my crutch resting against the trunk of a decaying oak some feet away. I fold my hands over each other. I close my eyes. I rest my forehead against my knuckles._

_There’s no god that will want me after what I’ve done. Even the devil will shudder at the sight of me. My dead friends will no longer listen when I speak to them, a habit I’ve fostered in private. Heaven will bar its gates; I will never see its interior. Still, I breathe it, this one final prayer, its unformed words a silver cloud on the glacial air._

_Then, I straighten, look over the tidy grave that checkers the ground beneath the mausoleum of trees, leave the shovel against the tree, and gather up my crutch. I turn, and head in silence back to the house, the first steps of the last mile of my life._

*******

It’s late evening, the sky darkening into a diffuse violet over the trees, the muffled red glimmers of the struggling sun twinkling at the horizon. I’m alone, sitting in silence on the front porch. Conner is inside with Molly, undergoing some more guitar lessons. I can hear them through the cracked window, the sounds of their singing soft and muted in the snowy night. 

_“Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their shirts all soaked with sweat; He's riding hard to catch that herd, but he ain't caught 'em yet; 'Cause they've got to ride forever on that range up in the sky; On horses snorting fire… As they ride on hear their cry…_

_“As the riders loped on by him he heard one call his name; If you want to save your soul from hell a-riding on our range; Then cowboy, change your ways today, or with us you will ride; Trying to catch the devil's herd, across these endless skies…”_

I rest my head against the back of the rocking chair, listening, listlessly considering asking them to sing something less depressing, less relatable. Instead, I remain where I sit, gazing off into the distance, into the shadowy gloaming beneath the thin, reaching trees that line the snaking, snow-coated driveway. 

No ghost rider will ever ride past me, urging me to change my ways, offering me the prayer of a rare grasp at redemption. I sigh, watching my breath go cloudy and vanish in the cold, knowing I’m past that now. There is no hope, not for me, not anymore. I pummeled Demetrius into an unrecognizable blob of smashed pudding. I snapped Iago’s neck like it was a stick. I stuck a knife in that one Marauder’s neck and made a bath out of his blood like some gender-bent Elizabeth Bathory. I took Shorty and blasted Claudius’ head to bits and inwardly reveled at the sight. And then, after brawling with Chiron and destroying the interior of the farmhouse, I took that machete, chopped his fucking head off, and then carved him up like a goddamn holiday turkey. And it’s not like I did any of that by accident. I _knew_ what I was doing. I was fully aware of what was happening, where I was, _who_ I was—unlike the Demetrius incident, during which, looking back, I know was at least _semi-_ removed from reality, out of my skull, not really in command of my faculties. Maybe I could have come to forgive myself for _that_ slip off the moral wagon—but all the others, no. I stare at my hands, weapons of mass destruction and proxies of evil, innocently wrapped around a cup of tea, appearing so harmless at rest in their fingerless gloves. 

I haven’t spent much time with Conner since I came to this morning. I just can’t seem to face him. Molly mentioned he hasn’t spoken much, if at all, since that night with the Marauders, and although he joyfully hugged me the first second he saw me up, told me a bit about the book he was reading, and detailed how his guitar lessons were going, I noticed after this initial interaction that he _was_ quiet and extremely withdrawn, his eyes haunted and shadowed, his face bloodless and form noticeably sparser than before. I rub my throbbing temples. I did that to him. _I_ did. Not the Marauders. He’s afraid of me—of _me_ —now. 

I sniff, rub my nose. It’s too cold to sit out here for much longer, with no fire going in the chiminea. About to head inside, I start to reach for my crutch, and then pause. 

My muscles go tense, my heart pulls back and shoots forth to twang wildly against my ribs, and every hair flies up. I spring upright, the mug of tea clutched within straining knuckles, the crutch the same—the only weapons I have available. I squint, wondering if the dim light and my own dour thoughts are playing merry cob with me, and feel my pounding heart sink. There’s no mistake.

Figures, humanoid, are moving up the driveway—in silhouette against what light is left in the sky, camouflaged beneath the shadows of the trees. 

Goddammit. I’m so sick of this. Just sick of it. Of fighting, of fear, of losing myself more and more. I’ll kill again—I _know_ it. I will. The first instinctive, reactionary thought upon recognizing the figures as _real_ and _human_ was to kill them. Destroy them before they could reach the house, my son, my cobbled-together, somewhat-family within its confines. In that split second, I’d had a flash-image of myself beating their heads into the ground, bashing their skulls into inhuman rubble, kicking the snow over the blood, digging up the fresh grave in the woods and adding their bodies to the grim cemetery there. What the hell? I’ve done it before, I’m _obviously_ capable, why not again? Better them than my son, my loved ones inside—and at this juncture, at this point in time, I know _very_ well that I’ve come to love Molly and Juan, like they’re my own. 

I lean forward, feeling my brow furrowing, my jaw clenching. There’s something familiar about these forms—but what? What’s tickling my recognition?

My eyes struggle, vying against the darkness.

I stop breathing. 

_It can’t be. There’s no way. It’s impossible._

…But the nagging feeling that I _know_ who these figures are, that I know their gaits, it’s there, tugging at my consciousness, affirming my recollection—

_Oh, my God. It can’t be them, it can’t—_

I lose all of my breath in one exhalation when I realize that _yes_ —it _can_ be. 

And it is.

Artemis. Kaldur. 

Moving up the driveway, drawing closer to the walkway up to the porch, remaining in the shadows, low to the ground, moving stealthily—carefully. Obviously assessing their surroundings, the farmhouse. They’re both hooded, but as they draw closer, I know I can’t be mistaken. It’s them. 

And when Artemis sees me, standing here, stricken dumb and motionless on the porch, she straightens, and taps Kaldur. He turns his head, and his stance at once relaxes beside her. 

I hear her voice. 

“Dick?”

I lose the mug in my hand. It shatters against the wooden deck. 

The next thing I know, they’ve both rushed the front of the house, having sprinted across the snow, both of them grinning in disbelief, both of them uttering exclamations of unmatched surprise. Artemis reaches me first, and before my brain can catch up with what’s happening, she’s thrown both arms around my shoulders, risen up on her tiptoes, and pressed her face into my neck.

When my ears clear and my mind _finally_ careens into the present, I hear her, little spates of words that blink in and out, like Morse code. 

“Oh, my _God_ , Dick, we thought you were dead—Conner’s distress beacon went off—so scared—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry it took us this long—”

For the barest second, I can’t move, unable to comprehend the present, unbelieving in reality. 

And then, all at once, I hurl my own arms around her, and her hood falls, the tresses of her graying blonde hair tumbling over my hands. My chest is like a giant dam, a series of levees, straining, cracking—

And then the waterworks start. 

I clutch at her, sobbing, and just bawl harder when I feel Kaldur’s arms encircle both of us, drawing us that much closer to one another. 

They’re alive. 

They found us. 

We stay like this, in this timeless ball, nothing existing outside of the circle we’ve made, temporal passage ceasing, all things gliding into motionlessness, for I can’t say how long. I can’t tell yet if I’m dreaming. If I _am_ dreaming, I do know one thing—I’ll go full Drogo and the next person to die at my hand will be whoever dares wake me up. 

When the circle breaks, I don’t want to let them go. 

Artemis appraises me, and with a somber humor, motions at the crutch, the tied-off pant-leg. 

“Whoah, what happened to the rest of you?” she asks, and I’m surprised to see that I’m not the only one who spent that embrace in tears. She lays a finger on the full-on Wildling beard I’ve not bothered to rid myself of, and smiles wetly. “And what’s this?” 

“It’s a story and a half,” I tell her, swiping my eyes with the back of my hand. 

“Apparently,” she says, looking down soberly at where my leg should be. “I guess at least you’re not _dead_ like we thought, but it looks like you really gave dying your best damn shot, whatever happened…”

“Yeah, speaking of dying—I thought you _both_ were dead,” I tell her, turning toward the front door. “Where the hell have you guys _been_ all this time? Are you okay? Still have all your parts?” I’m rambling in my excitement and my curiosity, but I don’t care. I keep going. “What about everyone else? Who’s all at the stronghold, now? What’s the news on that? It’s not compromised, is it?”

Kaldur smiles, holding up a hand to pause me. “It’s a story and a half,” he says, warmly echoing my own words. “It sounds as though we have a pretty fair amount of catching up to do.”

“Yeah, but first things first,” Artemis says eagerly. “Where’s Conner…”

I smile. “Hang on.”

I open the front door, and step inside, leaving Kaldur and Artemis at the threshold. Molly and Conner both look up at me from where they sit, instruments in hand, in the den.

“Uh, guys…” I start, suddenly grinning stupidly, “we have houseguests.”

They peer at me quizzically, their postures going tense, the instruments both forgotten and slowly placed aside. 

“…What do you mean, houseguests?” Molly asks warily, even as Conner half-rises from his seat, his stance loaded, ready. Wolf rises with him from where he lies at the boy’s feet.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay,” I tell them. “You’re not going to believe this. I’m not even sure I believe it myself. But… It’s my teammates. Kaldur and Artemis. They’re here.”

Conner’s jaw drops. “What?”

I nod emphatically, barely containing myself. “Yeah. It’s them, Conner.”

“Really?”

My grin only gets bigger. I’m visibly quivering, almost losing my grip on the crutch beneath my trembling fingers. “Yes—really. They’re here.”

The guitar goes flying as Conner leaps to his feet, and before I can speak a word, he’s sprinted past me toward the front door, Wolf hot on his heels. Molly rises, and comes up beside me.

“Are you sure it’s them?” she asks under her breath. “It’s not someone posing as them, or anything like that?”

“Well, it’s been a while since I’ve seen them,” I concede, “but I still _know_ them—and if they’re impostors, they’d fool their parents. Plus, Wolf will be able to tell if they’re the real deal, and I’m not hearing any sounds of evisceration so far. I’m _pretty_ sure we’re safe, Molly.”

“All right, then,” Molly tells me with feeling, and with a smile, she falls into step with me and we join my son as he gleefully zooms onto the front porch.

“Conner!” Artemis cries jubilantly as he bounces toward her and Kaldur, his head whipping back and forth between them, too excited to commit to greeting one first over the other. She saves him the trouble, holding her arms out. He readily bounds to her, as though this is a long-anticipated reunion, rather than a first meeting. She pulls him from his feet, squeezing him tightly to her, and gives him a shake. She puts him down, releasing him, and he then turns his attention to Kaldur while Artemis gives Wolf an ecstatic rub-down. He whines with joy and his tail wags so wildly I worry it might snap right off his bottom. 

“Whoah—you’re Aqualad…” Conner’s eyes go wide with amazement as he looks up at Kaldur.

Aqualad has always been inspiring, but he’s a figure to evoke some serious wonder in his older years now, with the lines of his age accentuating his striking features, the somatic evidence of a deep, deep wisdom, only grown more profound in our years apart. His solemn, quiet mien is holy, almost—knowingand serene. 

“Indeed. Aquaman now,” Kaldur says, his serious, ministerial disposition lightened by his bright tone. He lays a hand on my awestruck son’s shoulder, and lowers himself to eye-level, and then draws him into an unexpected embrace. “And first meeting or no, video calls or no, it’s safe to say I’d know you _anywhere_.”

Artemis grins up at me from where she kneels by Wolf, rubbing his belly. “He _looks_ like Zatanna.”

I nod, feeling a sudden pang of loss. Conner sheepishly rubs at his hair a bit.

“He does, but looking at him, I can see a lot of you in him, too,” Kaldur says to me, rising and smiling down at my son. 

Artemis nods her accord. “Yeah, it’s the eyes and the jawline. Those are yours for sure.” 

“The hair, as well. Although,” Kaldur adds lightly, “I daresay he’s a bit taller than you were at this age.”

I chuckle, remembering my painfully commitment-phobic growth spurt. “That’s the truth.”

“So, Conner,” Kaldur says, his deep, familiar voice friendly. He rubs Wolf’s ears as he rises and approaches him in greeting. “I’m eager to hear about your magical abilities and how they’re developing. Queen Mera is pretty anxious to start training you.”

A look of trepidation passes over the boy’s face, but it fades quickly. “So… are we going back to Atlantis?”

Kaldur and Artemis both look to me. 

“We’ll worry about that part later,” I say. “In the meantime, though… Guys, this is Molly, the lady of the house.”

“The very _old_ lady of the house,” Molly says humorously, and steps forward, a smile across her kind, elderly face.

“Eh, we’re all getting along in years,” Artemis chuckles, her eyes crinkling comfortably into the smattering of crow’s feet at her orbital bones, a detail I hadn’t noticed in the patchy video feeds. Again, in the lamplight from the windows, I pick up on the strands of gray scattered throughout her blonde hair. “You know we haven’t seen Dick since we were… God, how old _were_ we?”

I consider. “I’d have been… twenty-one, twenty-two?” I shrug, not wanting to think on it too hard, considering that the last time I saw either of them in person was on the mission that preceded Roy’s and my capture, and I’d rather enjoy this reunion than revisit horrors past.

Molly’s eyebrows go up. “Wow, it’s been that long?”

“It has,” Kaldur says. “We’ve spoken often via video calls, but we haven’t met in person for well over eleven years now.”

“Well, come into the house, then,” Molly says. “Let’s get you introduced to my husband, Juan, then see about some supper… Are you hungry?”

“Was the sky blue back in 2017?” Artemis jokes. “We really don’t want to impose on you, though…”

“Oh, please,” Molly says. “Trust me, honey, we do okay, living off the grid. Well enough that we can spare a meal or two.”

“Oh, really!” Artemis exclaims with interest. “How are you living off the grid? Is it easier here in the country than it is in the cities?” 

As Molly explains, we make our way to the cellar, where Juan jars and organizes food stores. 

“Here’s life off the grid in action,” she says warmly. “Juan, guess who’s here…”

He looks up from his task at the workbench, and inclines his head, his eyes widening. 

“Well, turn my water into wine,” he says, shaking his head, a smile crossing his face. “I’d know Aqualad here from a hundred miles off.”

“Am I still so distinctive?” Kaldur asks humorously.

“You are,” Molly says with a light chortle. “Plus, our son was a pretty big fan of yours. It was always Aqualad this, Superboy that…”

“And this one, who, I’m guessing, is _the_ Artemis—Tigress,” says Juan, approaching her and shaking her hand between both of his once he’s released Kaldur’s. He’s openly eager, bobbing about with giddy enthusiasm, his grin uncontained. Even at his age, such a fanboy. I smile.

She nods. “Yep, that’s me. Or was. Hopefully will be again, on a limited basis.”

“Well, this is really something,” Juan says. “I can’t say I ever expected to have even one hero in my house, let alone this many at once.”

“We just wish it could be under better circumstances,” Kaldur says. “And we really don’t wish to take advantage of your hospitality. We’ll be moving on as soon as possible.”

“Oh, don’t you dare,” Juan says warmly. “It’s an honor to have you, really. And by all means, we can afford some hospitality. Plus, I have to admit I’m curious—I imagine there’s _quite_ the story, here…”

“There is,” Artemis confirms. “Might be better to sit down and pop some popcorn or something first, though—it’ll take a while.”

“Undeniably it will—I feel that Dick also will have quite the story to tell,” Kaldur says.

All at once, my heart goes from zero to ninety, shuddering in a crazed frenzy, smoking the edges of my vision. My palms dampen, seeping sweat into a cold skin on my flesh, my back following suit with a dribble tickling its way down my spine. My throat mushrooms, damming my breath within my chest. 

_Ragged shears of flesh reaching in bloody streamers through a floret of gore—_

_—Teeth skipping over the wooden floor, bouncing like jumping beans—_

_—A disembodied, gaping face, trundling away from mangled shoulders, the jaw still working—_

_—Gleaming, greasy-black garbage bags, piling up in the snowy grave—_

Before I outwardly unravel, I take a slow, measured breath, and, affecting calm, I shake my head, gesturing at Artemis and Kaldur with a forced smile. “You guys go first.”

“All right, then,” Molly says happily. “Let’s head upstairs.”

*******

“I’ll be damned,” Juan says incredulously, leaning back in his seat at the kitchen table. “So… let me get this straight. You were captured in South Carolina by one of the Marauder gangs—the Fatal Five or whoever they were—and then imprisoned in one of the Death Shafts?”

Kaldur. “Indeed we were.” 

“For how long?” Molly asks.

“…Months, I think. But who knows… Time kind of got lost in that place,” Artemis replies.

“And yet, here you are… How on God’s gray earth did you get out?” Molly queries. 

There’s a pause, as Kaldur and Artemis share a glance, one I can’t read. 

“It was tough,” says Artemis. “I mean… Okay, they didn’t send us to their slaveries or the reprogramming process or anything, and they didn’t send Kaldur to the tanks, but… They knew we had info, and a _lot_ of it. So being incarcerated there… wasn’t exactly a picnic.”

I don’t miss the shadow of anguish, murky and stormcloud gray, that seeps into her eyes as she fixes her gaze on the false wood of the tabletop. Both she and Kaldur seem burdened, hounded, all at once overflowing and hollow. Subtly, I allow a slow, quiet, heartsick sigh to escape my lungs. The marks of this world are clear on all of us. Kaldur, for all that he’s aged well, dons sorrow like a leaden cowl, unseen, but felt, and palpable to all. Artemis, although she’s as pretty as I remember, looks worn and faded, like a photograph of herself that’s been repeatedly crinkled, rubbed and mashed, and then smoothed out again. I run a hand over the bristles of my facial hair. 

“Escape was hard-bought,” Kaldur murmurs. “But it was managed. Dick, on that subject, why don’t you tell us how you and Conner came to be here?”

I jerk my head to look up at him, and fight with words for a seemingly ceaseless moment. 

Finally, I shrug. “It’s… not really that interesting a story,” I say, maybe too casually. “There was a confrontation with the Marauders, we got out of it, we came to this house, Juan and Molly offered us a place to stay, the end.” 

Both Artemis and Kaldur frown at me, both of them clearly not buying it, even as Juan and Molly each look askance. I level a brief look on Molly, all at once withering and pleading, when she opens her mouth to speak. Recognition crosses her features, and she remains quiet. I feel my shoulders relax, even as an air of tension steals into the room. 

“I take it that it was this fight with the Marauders that made Conner set off his distress beacon?” Kaldur asks. “And how you…” He looks toward the stump of my left leg. 

I nod, enormously uncomfortable, wanting to crawl out of my own skin. My son fidgets, looking from Kaldur and Artemis, to me, to Molly and Juan. “…It was a little hairy,” I say. 

There’s a brimming, discomfited pause.

“…Do you know what group it was?” Artemis asks, breaking the teeming silence. 

_The Black Horsemen._

“No.”

Kaldur eyes me in the hush that follows. I resolutely study a stain on the tablecloth, just past my own dinner plate. I reach out, pick up my glass, sip water in silence. I’ve lied, omitted truth, and danced around verity more times than I can even recollect or count at this point, but there is now a restless, untiring terror in me that I just can’t hide—no matter what efforts I make. Every monster that stalks me in the dark, now, every one of them is as plain on my face as the new shadow of beard I wear across my jaw. Finally, I return his gaze, wordlessly begging him not to push me, not to make me bare my ugly, smirched soul to them, the soul I’d just as soon keep buried. 

“Well,” he says, “I guess it doesn’t matter so much as this point. What’s important is that we’re here, we’re together again, and we’re alive and well. That’s worth more note than _how_ we came to be here.”

I can sense his own reticence to describe the experiences that he and Artemis suffered in the Death Shaft, the demons of that place plainly weighing on his shoulders, on Artemis’. An unspoken, collective understanding passes between us. Neither will ever ask the other to make visible our demons. The tension slithers from the air, slowly and easily, but completely.

“I agree,” Artemis says. “Screw how we got here. We’re here, we’re safe, we’re together. That’s what matters.”

“Hear, hear,” I say warmly, relieved, sending a smile her way. 

Juan rises. “You know, let’s not worry about any of that. Molly and I have a bottle of wine we’ve been saving for a long time now… I think this reunion warrants us breaking into it, what do you guys think?”

After a smattering of accord, Juan hurries to produce the bottle of raspberry wine that, he informs us proudly, he and Molly crafted themselves. It’s sweet stuff, and given that I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since the night Jason and I got demolished in the garden at Wayne Manor and I passed out on my face like the town drunk in front of the fireplace, I feel woozy in short order, and leave my glass unfinished on the table. I let Conner try a little. He mentions that it’s better than coffee, which makes all of us chuckle. I withhold the cup when he reaches for it again. 

“When you’re twenty-one,” I tell him, my tone facetious. 

We converse well into the night, long after the others polish off the bottle of wine, long after Conner’s fallen asleep against my arm, long after I’m brought tolerably up to speed regarding the goings-on since Gotham’s razing. We talk about the stronghold itself, how it works, how supplies are acquired, how it’s maintained. Who’s there, how they’re doing, how they’ve been. Reports that have been turned up, conspiracy theories, political news. All things that we had agreed to be unsafe to discuss over video feed, however secure I might have ensured the connection would be. It’s hours before I see Conner up to bed, and turn in myself, my head spinning from the wine and the overload of information. More time passes still as I lie in a restless state, somewhere between sleeping and waking, my thoughts swirling in wild circles, fast and hectic, ruminating on all that’s happened over the last packed twenty-four hours, and on the farther-reaching implications of these events. I turn these ramifications over and over in my mind, studying every facet of each one as though they are, all of them, unsolved Rubik’s cubes, begging to be deciphered. When the night has reached its blackest point and the silence is so absolute it’s almost tangible, I’ve made my decision. Although the heartbreaking choice I’ve come to will destroy everyone around me, not the least of all myself, I know that it’s the right one, and, at last, the loud, teeming mess of thoughts whirlpools down into a dark sleep. 

*******

Morning dawns soundless and cornflower blue, sprinkled with the silver of fat, indolent snow. The sunrise still takes until well after mid-morning to show up, if it can even be called “sunrise.” I irritably worry at a hangnail on my thumb, and toss an equally irritable sigh into the biting air. In my current ongoing bid to transmutate into some decrepit, gray-haired retiree, I’m resting in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, my customary spot, where I’ve sat since we finished our early breakfast. I’ve tried not to feel displaced, reminded of my insufficiencies, as I’ve watched Conner cling first to Artemis upon waking, spending an overlong time with her by the fireplace, talking unremittingly about God knows what in hushed tones, and then to Kaldur. They _still_ sit together at the kitchen table, Kaldur taking questions regarding the mystic arts and the changes that Conner’s own powers have undergone like a college advisor with an overabundance of patience and unending wealth of knowledge, with my son gazing up at him with an unmasked wonder and childish hero-worship. He looked at me like that, once upon a time. I savagely tear the hangnail from my middle finger, watching as the blood pools on my skin. 

Still, I should probably be grateful for this, happy, even, all things considered. But it’s hard to feel that way— _so_ hard, when I feel anything but.

Artemis surprises me when she comes out onto the porch, wrapped in her hooded coat and torn, woolen scarf, and sits down in the rocker beside me with a murmured greeting. 

“So,” she tells me once she’s settled, “how about going over our game plan from here?”

“What game plan?” My voice is dismal, tired, forced. The conversation that I’ve dreaded hitherto is upon me now—no more avoiding it by sitting on the porch like a crabby old geezer and ignoring all that transpires around me. 

“You know… when we’re leaving, how we’re going to handle supplies on the road, what our mode of transportation will be, how we’ll keep the Marauders off us. We need to get _something_ of a plan figured out—Mera wants us back as soon as possible, especially with Conner’s magic and everything.”

Here goes. 

I sit on my confession a moment more, watching my breath puff gray on the blue air. 

“…I won’t be going with you,” I tell her. 

She inclines her head, frowning at me.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Just what I said,” I say. “I won’t be going.”

Her brows furrow. “…What about Conner?” 

“I want him to go with you,” I explain, lifting a hand. “He _needs_ to go with you. But Artemis—I _can’t_ go. For about a million reasons that I can’t get into, I don’t belong there. I’m sorry.”

“Dick, what the hell are you talking about?” she asks, and in spite of her words, her tone is mild. 

“…I just can’t,” I tell her, with a sigh. 

“Can you maybe be more specific?” she asks. “What do you—”

“Please—just trust me, okay?” I break in. “I can’t…” I struggle to find the proper words. “I don’t _want_ to talk about it, or get into why. But… I’m not… I’m not even _worthy_ to fight for this cause. I’m no Leaguer, I’m no Young Justice member, I’m not even a hero anymore.”

“Are any of us?” Artemis queries darkly.

I ignore her. “…It’s not like I can do much for the rebellion these days, anyway.” I stare miserably at my half-leg, my heart making a slow, sticky descent into my gut. I rub tiredly at my face. “…And Conner—he’ll be better off without me. _Way_ better.”

Artemis turns her gaze away from me, and is silent for a long, long time, looking out over the snowy countryside that spans the front yard. It’s beautiful in its contrasting, austere way, all blues and whites and grays, the trees reaching in elegant, blackest-black pen-and-ink sketches over the backdrop. I do the same, waiting for her to speak, ready to defend my decision, equally prepared to omit any explanation of its uncomfortable whys. 

“Dick,” she murmurs finally, breaking the encompassing quiet. “I know what happened to you.”

I jerk my head to look at her. “…What?”

She sighs, and returns my panicked gaze, her own unreadable. “Conner told me what happened.” 

I freeze, my stomach paddling, every organ sinking, every hair rising. “Is _that_ what you were doing? Over by the fireplace? Talking about—about—”

“What happened to you? Yes,” Artemis says. “He asked me not to say anything about him telling me. But…”

“Oh, Christ,” I hiss, and grind my fingers into my beard. I take in a breath, and look up, closing my eyes. Releasing it, I look back over at her. “What did he tell you?”

“From the look on your face, I’m guessing everything,” she says. “What the Marauders did. Not just to him, or Juan, or Molly, but to you, too.” She draws her knees up, shifts her weight. “He didn’t have the word for it, but I got a pretty good idea of what went on from what he told me.”

At the look in her eyes, I feel like I’m approximately one nanosecond from baptizing this porch with vomit. I look away from her, humiliated beyond belief, all at once unable to tolerate that compassionate gaze, and cover my face with my hands. “Oh, my God…” I pull my palms down, leave them over my mouth and nose, and then cover my face again. “Oh, my God.”

“Dick,” Artemis says, her voice unexpectedly warm and gentle. “Stop that.”

I look frantically at her. “Stop what?”

“Stop looking so ashamed.” 

“Stop looking so—Artemis, what did Conner _tell_ you?” I demand, my voice rising in pitch, growing loud and grating. “Obviously not everything, if you really think—”

“No, trust me, he did,” she interrupts. 

“Then what the _hell_ are you talking about, don’t look so ashamed?” My chest starts its accustomed trembling, my chin following, preceding tears. I look at her, desperate, pleading. “I killed them, Artemis—I killed them.” My hands lower. _“I killed them.”_

“I know.”

At the calm, unruffled look in her eyes, I feel my tears stall as confusion casts a blanket over the scape of my emotions. I open my mouth to speak, but Artemis beats me to it.

“Dick,” she says, her voice grim. “…Do you really think you’re the only one of us who’s killed one of those monsters?”

“One? Try like five,” I mutter, dragging my hand across my messy hair. 

“Big whoop. Try like ten,” she says with a mirthless laugh. 

I look over at her.

“How do you think Kaldur and I escaped that Death Shaft?” she asks, her voice low, almost imperceptible. 

I move my eyes to the yard, and don’t reply. A host of mixed emotions swirls within me at this confession, too many to knit into cohesive words. I rock in my chair for a moment, and then stop. A sleepy hum of wind whispers over the snow.

“…It’s a choice I’m pretty sure a _lot_ of us have had to make at this point,” Artemis sighs. “Is it something any of us are proud of…” She shakes her head. “There are things in this world that you can’t stop seeing, no matter how hard you try.” 

“I know all about that,” I murmur. 

She draws her knees up to her chin, tucks her coat over her legs. “Listen,” she says gently. “We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. It’s horrible, but it won’t change the fact that this is war. It’s _war,_ Dick. Sometimes… It’s kill or be killed. We don’t always have a choice anymore.”

“…There’s always a choice,” I mumble unhappily.

“Yeah,” she concedes, shrugging, “you could have chosen to sit back and watch those bastards rip your ten-year-old’s tongue out and then gang rape him.”

“Artemis—” 

“And then you could have continued to sit back while they took him off to the Death Shaft to have his brain put through the shredder until it turned to oatmeal or get sent to the tanks to wind up boiled down into energy gloop.” She looks hard at me. “Think about what _would_ have happened if you hadn’t acted. I mean _really_ think about it.”

“I didn’t have to _kill_ them,” I maintain miserably.

There’s a heavy, snowy pause.

“…I disagree,” Artemis says. 

“Look,” I state, pressing a hand into my forehead. “I can see how _you’d_ have had no other choice. I’ve been in one Death Shaft—for espionage—and that one time alone made it pretty clear that if I got caught, I’d probably have to play fast-and-loose with my moral code to get back out again.” I worry at my lower lip. “Thankfully that time I got lucky. But… everything else?” I’ll be lucky if I have a lower lip in the next five minutes. “I just don’t know, Artemis. I mean… I dragged that one guy off and just beat his head in. Totally unprovoked. I just sneaked up on him and pulled him into the woods and gave him the Opie treatment, only with my bare hands.”

“Hmm. Is the guy dead?”

“…I’m not sure.”

Artemis makes a huffing noise. “Well, okay, I’ll agree that maybe that was a little in the gray, but I can’t say I feel too bad for him, either. That was the fucker that killed Babs, wasn’t it?”

I nod, silent. She looks sidelong at me, and then twiddles with the tattered end of her sleeve.

“Anyway,” she says. “As for everything else… You really had no more choice than Kaldur and I did, Dick.”

I let another pause settle over us, wrangling with my writhing thoughts.

“…It doesn’t mean it _feels_ good,” she continues gloomily, saving me the trouble of finding speech. She lowers one foot and starts rocking her chair, lethargically, with an air of vast, weighty fatigue. “I’ll say it again—there are some things that you just can’t stop seeing.” 

She looks over at me and draws in a breath. Piqued, I lean toward her as she launches into her tale. 

“Kaldur tricked his guard, got out of his cell, helped me get out of mine,” she begins, her tone hushed, morose. “We were moving around the building on the sly, taking what we needed as we came to it, avoiding any security—” She sighs. “Until we got caught. Which I guess was inevitable in that place.” She stops rocking, going still. “I skirted the guards that tried grabbing me, but they pulled Kaldur into a cell.” She pauses, the silence dragging on for what seems a full-on era. “They had him on the ground, on his belly, with a gun pointed at his temple. I’d nabbed my bow and quiver back from this mini-armory they stock their guards with by then—”

“They added to their armory with your weapons?”

“Yeah. Nice, huh? They didn’t have Kaldur’s equipment, though. Morons probably couldn’t use it.”

I grunt an accord. “So what happened then?”

“After I found Kaldur with a gun to his head? I didn’t even think twice, Dick. I put an arrow right through the guy’s skull.” Her words resound on the quiet air, swallowed by the following silence, their echoes lost. “I put it through his left eye. And I kept doing that with the rest of them, until one of them got his shit together and leveled his weapon on me—I don’t even know what the thing was, a disintegration ray, probably—and Kaldur leapt up behind him and snapped his neck.” Again, she sighs. “We made it out of that hellhole by killing every guard we came across, all stealth take-downs, and sneaking out through the sewage system.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.” She nods. “Jesus. Every time I close my eyes… All I see is that first man, the arrow just sticking out of his eye. He kept upright for a minute, like… his jaw kept moving and he was making noises and he staggered around before he finally toppled over.” She visibly shivers. “You expect it to be quick when you get them in the head like that, like they’ll just drop and that’s a wrap. But… it wasn’t like that. It wasn’tlike that at all. I feel so _sick_ just thinking about it.” She heaves another sigh. 

There’s silence.

And then—

“…I blew off one guy’s head with a sawed-off shotgun and chopped another one’s off with a machete,” I admit dully. “Broke another’s neck. Stabbed one guy in the carotid.”

She looks over at me. “Oh, don’t you dare one-up me on this, Boy Wonder.”

With a sense of wonder, I now feel an even deeper kinship with Artemis, and an odd sense of comfort in the knowledge that I’m in understanding company. I give her a half-smile. “Better amp up the depravity then, Tigress.”

We chuckle a bit. 

“Pass,” Artemis says. “Anyway… it’s over. It’s done with. There’s nothing we can do about it now. Barry’s gone, we can’t turn back time. We’ll have to carry this for the rest of our lives.” She hugs her knees to her chest. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Subtly, I eye her, unwittingly seeing her as she might have been, standing with an arrow nocked, loosing it into the eye of the guard. A snapshot of myself, the machete lifted over my head, my front splashed with gore, my eyes crazed with bloodlust, springs into my field of vision. Both of us had bitten into that forbidden fruit, and, like Eve, we’d feel the aftershocks of our sampling forever.

“How can I move on from this?” I ask her, the sound of my voice abrupt in the muffled quiet. “Atone for it? How can I even _look_ at my son after what I’ve done?”

“If you ask me,” she says, “you’ve already atoned for it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Dick, you’ve seen way more horror than anyone on this earth ever should, even in this post-apocalyptic crapsack,” Artemis says, her tone sober, serious. “And what those Marauders did to you…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’d almost say I’m glad you killed them.”

“…That’s pretty heavy,” I tell her, passing a hand over my bearded face. 

“Yeah, but in some ways, I mean it,” she says. “I know it _really_ sucks that it came to what it did, and I’m sorry about that part, but… I’m _not_ sorry they’re dead and you’re alive. That Conner’s okay. Just like I’m not sorry Kaldur’s alive and those guards are dead. And if I had to make the choice again… Well, I’d do exactly the same thing. If I have to kill for my loved ones in this world, so be it. We’re all the heroes in our own stories, regardless of what we do.” She sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just easier for me, sharing my dad’s DNA and everything.”

I give her a half-smile. “I doubt that.”

“Oh, let me convince myself,” she grumbles, half-smiling back. “Anyway. Let me ask you something… If you really feel like you won’t be coming with us back to the compound, what _are_ you planning to do?”

I keep my eyes on the yard, studying its roving hills, its drawing of trees, its chattering, heather stream visible from the porch. The sky is lightening, coloring amber and charcoal, the silvery snow glittering in its reaching blanket. I think on the farmhouse, its cozy interior, its substantial resources, its quiet safety—the things I killed to protect. 

“I’m not really sure,” I acknowledge. “I guess I thought I’d stay here and help Molly and Juan out for a while. Maybe die in a few months. I don’t know _how_ I’ll die, but it’s not like it’s hard to turn up an untimely death these days.”

“Okay, first, please don’t die,” Artemis says snappishly. “I just found out you’re alive after months of trying to wrap my head around you dying. That fucking _shattered_ me, Dick. Zatanna was bad enough, and thinking about Conner… God, it brought up Lian and Jade. Don’t you even _think_ about adding to that. There are still people who love and care about you—your _son_ not the least of all. And second—” 

I hold up a hand. “Whoah, I didn’t say I was going to kill myself or anything.”

“Yeah, well, that shit is still suicidal ideation and if you’re joking, I don’t think it’s funny. Anyway, second, you think Savage won’t send people looking for those asshats buried in the woods at some point?”

“All the more reason for me to stay,” I protest. “After all Molly and Juan have done for me, shouldn’t I hang here and protect them?”

She slowly shakes her head, looking angrily at me. “If you’re not protecting your cub, Papa Wolf, and you know he’s somewhere safe… I feel like I’d have to put my money on Savage’s people. I _know_ what you can do, but if you’re talking like this and Conner’s somewhere you don’t need to fear as much for him, I just don’t see it ending well.” She jerks her gaze away. “It means you’ve already given up. And at that point, when they come for you—”

“ _Already_ given up?” I snap, cutting her off. “Goddammit, I should have given up months ago. I should have given up when I was lying there naked with my leg torn off and my guts hanging out and my entire shoulder missing. I should have given up when those assholes were taking turns riding me like Seattle Slew. I should have given up when I realized I’d _never_ ask a girl to give me a blow job again. I should have given up when I found Bruce and Alfred with their heads blown off, when I couldn’t protect my son, when I watched Zatanna die and there was _nothing_ I could do—”

All at once, I burst into tears, big, stupid, embarrassing, undignified, childish sobs. Feeling like a total moron, angry with and despising myself for losing my shit like this, I shove my palms into my face, hiding from Artemis, pressing my arms into my sides. When she leaps to her feet and rushes to me, throwing her arms around me, tugging me to her in spite of my initial resistance, I just cry like an even bigger baby. 

“Dick—I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m _so_ sorry—” she says frantically. “I wasn’t thinking…” She backs away, and gently pulls my hands from my face. “Okay, let me start over. Square one.” She takes a breath. “Let’s not worry about talking or anything. Has _anyone_ actually like… comforted, or even _hugged_ you since all of that shit happened? And I don’t mean Conner. Has _anyone_?”

I’m silent. I haven’t really _wanted_ anyone touching me, and Molly and Juan have both sensed and respected that. And while I’ve drawn comfort from Conner’s nearness, I _have_ pulled markedly away from him, now that I think on it. It’s also not like I’ve sought him out to make me feel better. That’s not his job—and it shouldn’t be. 

“God,” Artemis says when I don’t respond. “Come here.”

I go stiff when I feel her arms envelop me again, the sensation slapping my heart and making it buck wildly. The feeling of her hold gives me the now accustomed sense that my skin is going to grow legs and skitter right off my bones. I remain rigid and uncertain for a moment, my nerves bouncing around uncomfortably, until she draws back, and, with a sad, sad look on her face, lays one rough, dry, callused palm on my cheek. 

“Dick,” she murmurs. “I won’t hurt you. But…” She sighs, and removes her hand. “I understand if you don’t really want hugs from anyone right now. I do. I won’t touch you. Okay? Just know, if you ever _do_ decide you want a hug, a shoulder, whatever, I’m here—”

Okay. That does it. I _do_ want a hug. I want a goddamn _heap_ of hugs. I want a hug that goes on fucking forever. I practically fall into her before she can finish her sentence, clasping her waist, feeling her hair under my hands, the bony ridges of her shoulder through her coat against my face. She readily wraps her arms around me, laying one hand on the back of my head, her fingers curling in my hair. For I don’t know how long, she lets me cry myself sick, the snow dampening the sound, shrouding us in something like an external embrace. Occasionally, she rubs my back, strokes my hair, whispers things I don’t register. I let it sink in, drinking it up, letting it pour into the emptiness that’s eating me alive from the inside out. 

When the tears have tapered down into little four-year-old’s sniffles, Artemis’ words modulate, and form into sounds I recognize. 

“Listen,” she’s telling me. “I know this has been a nightmare. I know how you’re feeling about yourself. I know you think your son will be better off away from you. But… Conner understands you a lot better than you realize.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know,” I mumble thickly.

“Trust me, he does,” she insists. “He told me some things that I _promised_ I wouldn’t relay, but… Believe me when I say he knows pretty well where you’re coming from, and because of that, he needs you now more than ever. Okay? Dick, that boy would be _lost_ without you. You’re all he has. He will _not_ be better off without you, no matter what you think.”

“He saw me become a murderer,” I mutter into her shoulder.

“He could have seen _you_ murdered,” she reminds me gently. “Which do you think he’d choose to see?”

I don’t respond.

“We both know the answer to that,” she says. “Whatever you might think… He’s not afraid of you. He _worships_ you, whether you realize that or not.”

“He shouldn’t.”

“You’re his father,” she says. “He always will.”

“I don’t deserve it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“He’s afraid of me. Or should be.”

“He’s not, I promise. If anything, he’s afraid of himself.” She’s quiet for a moment. “…Again, I promised I wouldn’t say anything about why. And Dick—you made the _hard_ choice. You chose to protect him and live with what you had to do to see that done after the fact. That took a hell of a lot of sacrifice for someone like you, and I _don’t_ mean sacrificing your humanity. It would have been a lot easier to just give your son an elephant tranquilizer and let the Marauders kill you.” I feel her arms tighten around me. “It’s _insurmountable_ for a person like you to live with the idea of having killed someone. That’s why the choice you made was the hard one. That your son is alive and has a chance at a future—that’s why it was the _right_ one.”

“He’ll never get over it,” I say. “What he saw. It was like a real-life Takashi Miike film.”

“We’ve all seen things we’ll never get over,” she murmurs. “At least for him… he’ll know he saw those things because you fought for and protected him. He’d be _way_ worse off if you’d died that night. There wouldn’t be any other side to that coin.”

I heave a slow, shuddering sigh. In some way, and for as hard, bitter, and scratchy a pill as it might be to swallow, I know she’s right.

“He needs you, Dick,” she says. “More than you know. Don’t back out on him now.”

I lean against her, not speaking, feeling—for the first time in I can’t even _remember_ how long—protected, sheltered, valued, forgiven, human, worthy, _safe._ I release a breath, absorbing this feeling, letting it warm me through to my core.

“And like I promised Conner,” she goes on, “I won’t tell anyone what happened. What happened to you, what had to be done—any of it. I won’t breathe a single word. I promise. No one will ever have to know. Okay?” 

I close my eyes, with this unusual peace mantling my weary mind. If I can feel like this with Artemis here, now, maybe I’ll keep feeling this way with the others at the stronghold, in the future. 

“Please say you’ll come with us,” she whispers. 

I relax a moment more, enjoying this momentary sense of peace, wishing it wouldn’t end, knowing it has to. 

“Okay,” I murmur finally. “Okay, I’ll come.”

*******

_Dark, bony trees swallow the house as we move over the hyperborean countryside, upright on the backs of the two horses that Juan acquired for us in town, the ranging drifts wheeling steadily past us in glimmering rolls of white under the pale sky. Conner sits in front of me, thrilled to be on horseback, his face all but glowing as he grins back at me after stroking the mare’s coarse, pewter-colored mane. The animal is a dapple-gray, Belgian draft horse, tall, stocky, strong. It’d be a ready meal for a Hound, but only if overcome—and this enormous specimen of equine power would prove a massive challenge for the beast._

_“Snoworries is this one’s name,” Juan said, patting her thick, gray-speckled neck. “Fits pretty well, doesn’t it? Plus, she’ll blend into the countryside with all this snow.”_

_I looked warily at the horse at first, studying her height and size, silently considering my missing leg, but Juan smiled, made a clucking sound, and tugged at the throatlatch of her bridle. She stooped down so I could comfortably mount, enthralling my son, and impressing me pretty thoroughly. Seated in the saddle, my son in front of me, I showed him how to nudge her flanks to encourage her to move._

_“I’ll handle the reins,” I told him, grateful that Bruce, being a society kid, was a consummate horseman, a skill he bequeathed to me._

_Snoworries settled once Conner got used to handling her, and I to balancing with only one leg to grip the barrel. In the noiselessness of the late morning, I gazed down at Juan and Molly where they stood, and felt my throat swell with a goiter of tremendous regret. I’d asked them to come with us, but they’d refused, no matter how I tried to persuade them otherwise. I’ll miss them. I’ll miss them terribly. I’ll miss them like my damn leg. And worry. God, will I worry._

_“Thank you,” I told them, barely able to squeeze my voice through my fattening throat._

_Molly reached over, and grasped my hand a moment. I had to work_ very _hard not to cry when she replied,_

_“You’re our soul-son, Dick. Conner’s our grandson. You’re family. If you’re ever able… or if things calm down… Come back and see us again, you hear?”_

_I nodded, and wrestled the lump in my gullet._

_“And don’t worry about us,” Juan said. “Whatever comes, we’ll be fine. And if not… Well. We’ll keep a big old eye on you from up in the sky. Okay?”_

_Again, I nodded, and tried to smile._

_“Keep in touch,” Juan said warmly, and gave Snoworries a pat on the hip._

_I turned back as we headed down the front drive, and he and Molly both lifted their hands to wave goodbye. Raising my own arm to return the gesture felt as though I tried to lift a loaded freighter, although its weight was nothing compared to that of my heart as we left them behind._

_Kaldur and Artemis pull ahead on their palomino, the packs on the saddle bouncing a little as the animal trots a few steps. Wolf lopes along beside us. Our own horse is laden down not only with the encumbrance of our weight, but with piles of bags of food, clothing, camping equipment. We’ll have to stay as far out of sight as possible with this much boon—we’ll be enticing oases to the myriad vagrants the hostile wilderness hosts in this godless land._

_My eyes move to Artemis’ bow and well-equipped quiver, and my thoughts to my own cache of weaponry. The Escrima sticks are gone, but in their stead are two makeshift metal batons that hold up acceptably enough, and they rest alongside several blades, firearms, home-fashioned smoke bombs, handcrafted incendiaries, and the handy Shorty. Our backpacks contain plenty of ammunition. All compliments of Juan's generous armory, and equally generous nature._

_When Zatanna died, it was a skin-splitting, tooth-loosening title bout, battling against the feelings of dread and despair that faced me like evil spirits from within the shadows of the wild. Moving through the woods now, I find with some curiosity that I’m not intimidated by this new journey ahead. And not because I’m heavily armed, or have two sizeable horses and Wolf to shield my son and me, legitimate, well-made camping gear, enough food to last a good while, or clean water. Or even a little more hope._

_Two of my dearest friends, friends that I trust with unadulterated conviction, are now once again at my side, to have my back if we encounter trouble on the road, to share in the burdens of this world, to define reasons to carry on the hard job of living when death beckons and tempts with its sweet promises of rest and relief._

_I free a hand and squeeze my son’s shoulder, gratified when he turns, and smiles at me. I haven’t asked him what it was that he told Artemis, his secrets. Maybe someday I will, but also, maybe I won’t. I’m strangely not hurt that he opened up to her, and not to me. The fact is, now that I’ve no longer convinced myself of the contrary, he looks at me again with the old trust, with the abiding faith that he once had, and that’s enough. I’ve decided not to dwell on whether I deserve his belief in me anymore. I’ll just try to earn it, to be worthy of it, from this point on._

_We press onward, keeping quiet in the swathing snow, well away from the winding, country road, picking through the trees, moving toward what I pray will be absolution, leaving the pale behind._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please feel free to ask any questions you might have, if anything is unclear. :-) Again... thank you for seeing this through with me. LOVE TO ALL. :D 
> 
> Xoxoxoxoxo  
> ~EF <3


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